“Echoes from the Key Bridge: A Baltimore Longshoreman”

World Premiere | Official Selection, 2025 Richmond International Film Festival

Echoes from the Key Bridge: A Baltimore Longshoreman is an 11-minute documentary film directed, written, produced, and edited by Maria Gabriela Aldana. The film reflects on the March 26, 2024 collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge—a tragedy that claimed the lives of six Latin American workers and severed a vital regional transportation route.

The film centers on Scott Ambrose, a Dundalk resident and longshoreman with International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) Union 333, who recounts his firsthand experience of the disaster, its immediate and long-term impact on his livelihood, and the resilience of his community as they navigate recovery and rebuilding.

Film Description

Ambrose describes waking in the middle of the night to the sound of the bridge’s collapse, witnessed directly from his bedroom window after completing his shift aboard the Dali. Despite 15 years of seniority with ILA Local 333 and ownership of Recent History Prop Rentals, Ambrose lost work immediately following the collapse. The sudden loss of income forced him to consider selling his home as he struggled to make ends meet.

Through Ambrose’s testimony, the film honors the often invisible labor that sustains global trade and foregrounds the human cost of infrastructural failure.

This project is dedicated to the six workers who lost their lives on March 26, 2024:

• Carlos Daniel Hernández, 24
• Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26
• Alejandro Hernández Fuentes, 35
• Jose Mynor Lopez, 37
• Maynor Yasir Suazo Sandoval, 38
• Miguel Angel Luna Gonzalez, 49

Background

According to Maximillian Alvarez, Chief Editor of The Real News Network, the collapse “crippled more than 15,000 workers whose lives are tied to the Port of Baltimore, along with another 140,000 workers whose jobs have also been affected.”

In 2024, Maria Gabriela Aldana, a Baltimore-based community artist and founder of Art of Solidarity, was contracted by the Baltimore Museum of Industry (BMI) to document, archive, and reflect on the community impact of the Key Bridge collapse. From June 2024 through March 2025, Aldana cultivated relationships with those most directly affected, resulting in Echoes from the Key Bridge—a collection of 32 oral histories from port workers, first responders, and community members.

Recorded in both English and Spanish, the project includes voices from Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Glen Burnie, and Annapolis. Aldana identifies the project’s core themes as “partnerships, urgency during crisis, and unseen labor,” alongside “the interconnected racial and ethnic histories of Baltimore as a port city shaped by generations of migration and work.”

Selected audio excerpts aired on WYPR.

Public Programming

Programming related to the project has included:

• Panel discussion at the Baltimore Museum of Industry
• Lectures at Towson University, Morgan State University, University of Texas at Austin, Goucher College, Latino Providers Network, and the Baltimore Ethical Society

Media Coverage

• Baltimore Beat — March 2025
• WYPR — January & March 2025
• Baltimore Magazine — March 2025
• Somos Baltimore Latino — February 2025
• The Baltimore Banner — December 2024
• WBAL-TV — December 2024
• WJZ — December 2024
• Baltimore Fishbowl — November 2024
• The Baltimore Sun — September 2024

Special Thanks

With gratitude to the Baltimore City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, Immigration Affairs of Baltimore County, Wendell Shannon Supreme, Scott Ambrose, and Port America Chesapeake for their partnership and support.

Surviving the Key Bridge 

will expand this project into 2026 by re-interviewing half a dozen of the participants to follow up on how they are overcoming the challenges of losing a partner, father, income, as well as sharing what programs and partners helped alleviate their various struggles. The project honors the invisible and untold stories of workers. It is a new documentary film that captures the human toll of the Key Bridge collapse through oral histories, community engagement, and public programming. The film will look back on the March 26, 2024 collapse of the Key Bridge that killed six Latin American people and cut off a vital regional transportation route through a structural racism lens. 

Support for this project validates the untold stories of immigrant workers who take on the most dangerous jobs, give up everything, to be slowly erased and importance dismantled. Since the collapse, the focus has been on the economy and the infrastructure of the actual bridge. Meanwhile, families suffer the loss of their loved one, work, and loss of community, exposed to media attention and bombarded by some who seek to take advantage of their vulnerability. 

Ms. Aldana has received the 2026 Creative Baltimore Fund Mayor’s Individual Artist Award to expand the project and continue working with a steering committee comprised of renowned Latin American leaders in Baltimore City, who will provide advice and access to other community groups.

Queernesseseseses
Community mural & youth workforce project
Mural dedication October 2025

Queernesseseseses is a community-based public art project launched in 2024 and led by community artist Maria Gabriela Aldana. Developed through an intensive planning process beginning in January 2024, the project is a collaboration between Art of Solidarity and Bmore Liberated, with Bmore Liberated serving as a core partner and member of the project’s steering committee.

The large-scale LGBTQ mural—facing Fayette Avenue on the north side of Bmore Liberated—calls attention to the critical importance of queer mental health while simultaneously training at-risk youth in public art design, painting, and workforce skills. The community-centered design process was facilitated every step of the way by Aldana, centering care, collaboration, and lived experience.

More than 80 original designs were created through collaborations among YouthWorks and ESCALERA–CASA youth (Baltimore City and Baltimore County high school students), queer therapists from Bmore Liberated, filmmakers, volunteers, and LGBTQ leaders from across Baltimore. Participating youth presented their learning as part of their paid internship experience—often one of their first jobs—gaining hands-on professional and creative skills.

By August 2024, the project received local attention for its short documentary films, which uplift the untold stories of LGBTQ changemakers in Baltimore. The project was made possible through a 2024 planning grant and a 2025 implementation grant from Public Art Across Maryland, a program of the Maryland State Arts Council, with additional support from neighbors, friends, and community donors who volunteered time and resources to bring the mural to life.

See the full process—from ideas to implementation to celebration:
https://artofsolidarity.org/section/532273-Queernesseseseses.html

Project Partners & Supporters
This project was made possible through the generous support of Public Art Across Maryland, a program of the Maryland State Arts Council, and in partnership with YouthWorks, ESCALERA (CASA), Patterson Park Neighborhood Association, Bmore Liberated, proud neighborhood residents, and dedicated volunteers.

Gallopinto
2013
Mixed media
62" × 22" × 6"

Gallopinto is Aldana's self portrait as a hanging wooden sculpture illuminated with lights, spelling the name of Nicaragua’s staple dish. Created as a call to gather and build community, the glowing sign reflects the experience of a Latin American immigrant serving as a beacon of hope in Baltimore. Its form deliberately mimics the iconic “Patterson” sign of Creative Alliance, where Aldana spent fifteen years working at full capacity to develop and sustain Latin American cultural programs. The piece honors food as cultural memory, signage as belonging, and visibility as an act of care and resistance.

A group exhibition by the same name honored Art of Solidarity's five year anniversary connecting its artist-participants across racial and political barriers.

Centroamerica (No Passport Required Mural)
2013
Mixed media on wooden panels, freestanding
9 × 9 ft

This interactive color-by-dot mural was created for Artscape and commissioned by the Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts as part of No Passport Required. Drawing from Nicaragua’s seismic landscape, the design reflects political unrest while centering the five original Central American nations united as a symbol of independence from Mexico. By inviting public participation, the work transforms collective mark-making into an act of shared history, migration, and cultural resilience. The artwork was part of a traveling exhibition across the continental US and Canada.