Few places in Mexico bear the weight of exoticism like the Isthmus of Tehuantepec; at the same time, few locations are so threatened by the new developmentalism. Toledo captures mirages in the garbage dumps of modernization, inspired by marginal photographs from the archive of Weetman Pearson, the contractor who designed the Trans-Isthmus Railroad for Mexican president Porfirio Díaz. These spectres could have been recorded in 1910 or in 2060. Modernization doesn’t provide measurable progress, much less so in a straight line. Development is, in reality, a tracing of amnesiac circles.

The accompanying poem entitled Naxiña’ rului’ladxe’/Rojo deseo is excerpted from Irma Pineda’s collection of poems, Guie’ ni zinebe / La flor que se llevó (Stolen Flower), published by Pluralia (Mexico City, 2013). All the poems in the collection form a single narrative, based on actual events: the 2007 rape and murder of an elderly Indigenous woman in rural Veracruz, by Mexican soldiers, and the discovery that soldiers had also raped young girls in the community.