Dicen, 2018

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This series encapsulates wisps of legends and stories that exist by word of mouth in la Huasteca Potosina, where reality, superstition and faith exist on the same plane. The metallic clinks of money exchanging hands blend with whispered devotions to La Guadalupana. She is Tonantzin, the Aztec earth mother goddess. It's December, and daily life is entwined with her feast day and the citrus harvest. The atmosphere is heavy with oranges in varying stages of life and decay. A cup of coffee, diluted with rain drops, sits nearby on a grave, waiting to be sipped by a resting soul. Sometimes the memory of galloping horses is heard: they carry conquistadores and revolutionary bandits in search of the precious stones Coxcatlán, San Luis Potosi is named for. A nahual shifts shape behind knotted vines. Chaques trick those walking alone in the jungle with false pathways until they emerge somewhere unfamiliar, disoriented. The wind brings the sound of a church bell that has not tolled for centuries. It is buried under the Jopoy convent ruins, which crumble in the soil like the lush excess of rotting winter crops. Long-sealed, tunnels are rumored to connect the remains of this church to various ejidos and the Xilitla cathedral 40 kilometers away. Historical records exist in church archives, but even those documents rely on the language of myth and legend. That's what they say.  "Dicen."