I’ve spent the last ten years living in and photographing the Mexican town of Ajijic, Jalisco, a place with its own rich traditions and ways of celebrating fiestas and holidays.

Each late winter, Ajijic’s unique characters, the sayacas, appear in the streets to take part in the Carnaval celebrations which overtake the town for two weeks.

Many people in Ajijic create their own elaborate costumes and masks to dress up as a sayaca during Carnaval. These color portraits show off the dedication that people have to maintain their town’s traditions.

Mexico’s most famous holiday gives families a moment to pause and remember lost loved ones and friends who are said to come back to the land of the living each November.

The catrina is a significant image in Mexican culture and on the Day of the Dead many people dress up and paint their faces.

These handcrafted, reuseable wooden towers with moving and rotating parts are laden with fireworks and then ignited during celebrations in Ajijic and other places in Mexico.

Some families build mausoleums on their cemetery plots to remember their loved ones and create a space for them in the afterlife which sometimes is as comfortable as a real home.

Though they tried, the Spanish never completely conquered Mexico. Today, religious, prehispanic-based dance is often a part of Ajijic’s Catholic processions and celebrations.

Jalisco is cowboy country and hardly a day goes by when you’re out and about that you don’t run into a charro or vaquero.

Some women and girls ride horses during parades in Ajijic or participate in competitive horseriding in a national circuit.

A passenger-side view of life along Highway 15 in northern Mexico.

Discarded metal vegetable cans, such as the brand La Costeña, are often used as flower vases in cemeteries throughout Mexico.