Every July, the Virgin of Zapopan, which is one of Mexico's most important Catholic icons, makes an annual visit to Chapala. She travels with an escort of dancers, bikers and clergy from her home in the basilica in Zapopan, located in the suburbs northwest of Guadalajara,...
We meet in the street. He's shaking uncontrollably and, since I've only been in Mexico for three months, I can't understand anything he's saying. It's clear that Ismael Sanchez has a form of motor neuron disease, and that's why he's having trouble controlling his...
In Central Mexico, a common way to decorate altars, graves and public spaces on the Day of the Dead is by making traditional sawdust carpets, called tapetes, which means carpet or rug.
The Carnaval celebrations in Ajijic, Mexico, last for six days and feature some of the town's most colorful characters, the masked zayacas.
Nearby Chapala celebrates Carnaval for nearly two...
Being the largest lake in Mexico, the views around Lake Chapala are vast expanses of water and sky. In the stormy, wet season of summer, clouds often interrupt the endless azure, but from fall through spring the skies are usually clear and the lake still.
Using a special...
A large sombrero with elegant, graceful lines makes for a wonderful photo, but the overhead sun often leaves the subject's face lost in deep shadow. For the longest time, I had avoided taking photos in this kind of situation. But in these...
The spirit of revolution is alive & well in Mexico, and celebrated with a national holiday each November 20.
I'll add more to this post later. In the meantime, check out the photos below and then see this photo essay about the
Day of the Dead ofrendas are the centerpiece of the Day of the Dead celebration, one of Mexico's oldest traditions and still an...
La Costeña is a famous Mexican canned food brand name, popular enough that you can find a can in any supermarket in the United States. You can also find empty cans of it, serving as flower vases, in
It's October 1, one month before El Día de Muertos, so it's officially OK to start getting into full Day of the Dead mode. And we'll do so with these photos from 22 Mexican cemeteries that I've...
As diverse as Mexico is, the same can be said for its music. The country's musical history started thousands of years ago with, of course, its indigenous people, and it continues evolving today in the bars, living rooms, and streets of its small...
In Mexico, where there are more saints (official and unofficial) than days available on the liturgical calendar, every day is a fiesta somewhere in the country. Even the cowboys have their own holiday. El Día del Charro -- the Day of the Cowboy...
The first stones of the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City were put into place in 1573, taken from the rocks of a nearby Aztec temple, which Hernán Cortés and his gang of conquistadores destroyed...
VIDEO: Watch this short video of the guelaguetza performance in Chapala, Jalisco.
Oaxaca's guelaguetza is a cultural dance and music event that takes place each July in Oaxaca City. The...
Landscape photography was my first venture in photography when I started taking photos eight years ago. So when I moved to Mexico a year later, in 2010, I took a lot of photos of landscape photos of Lake Chapala, sunsets, and egrets when I first...
Watch this short video of this year's procession of the Virgin of Zapopan in Chapala, Mexico.
Each year on the second Sunday in July, the Virgin of Zapopan is escorted from her home in...
Mexico City is the second-largest city in the world with its population of 21.2 million. So it's kind of a surprise to find this lush network of canals feeding off of its southern edge in the borough of Xochimilco.
Before the Spanish arrived in the 16th century, the town...
For many Mexican girls, their fifteenth birthday celebration, or fiesta de quince años, is the highlight of their teenage years. Sometimes these fiestas are planned years in advance and can cost hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the family....
Watch this video slideshow of photos taken in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas.
Chiapas: Defying Preconceived Notions of Mexico
When you arrive in the colonial-era town of...
VIDEO: Listen to 100,000s of thousands of gallons of tequila fermenting to the sound of Mozart at Tequila Cazadores in Arandas, Mexico.
If you've ever lived a tequila lover's dream and...
By the time our 1994 fire engine red Suzuki Samurai -- which my friend described as "basically like driving a covered motorcycle" -- bounced across the Mexican border, we had already broken down once for three days in...
Mother's Day in Mexico is probably not like what you're used to wherever you come from. In Mexico, it always falls on May 10 and here in Jalisco, it's sometimes celebrated with games in the community bullrings. Certainly, not everyone observes Mother's Day like this, but as...
Another year of Carnaval celebrations in Ajijic, Mexico, has come and gone, and the masked sayacas along with it. These guys (mostly young men and boys dressed in drag) appear early each year in Ajijic during the town's Carnaval celebrations, which stretch over several weeks...
Cemeteries are not so much for the dead as for the living. Nowhere else could this be better illustrated than in Mexico, where the nation devotes three days and nights during the Day of the Dead to partying with family in the local panteón with the spirits of their...
I had, as always, a blast photographing last month's Day of the Dead celebrations. It can take a lot of effort to energize yourself to spend two days walking for hours on end, taking the bus from town to town, staying up until past midnight...
The spirit of rebellion which formed during the Mexican Revolution, a 10-year affair that ended less than a century ago, still resonates today in modern Mexico. The insurgents who executed the coup are revered now as national heroes, and even the smallest rural town seems...
October 31 – Halloween for most, but here in Ajijic the day is dedicated to the town's patroness, the Virgin of the Rosary. Most incorporated towns in Latin America have a patron saint, as well as an incarnation of the Virgin Mary. Certain...
The Day of the Dead is a misnomer. It doesn't last just a day, but three. November 2 is the main celebration, but the day before is known as Children's Day or Day of the...
In the countryside of Jalisco, the way of the cowboy remains a lifestyle for a distinct few still practicing the 16th-century art of charrería. Apart from the daily clippety-clop of horse hooves on the cobblestone streets, the cowboys are a fixture of the many holiday...
The Day of the Dead altar is at once mysterious and visually legible, a cultural touchstone whose multi-layered symbology can be decoded by a knowledgeable observer.The holiday's indigenous, millennia-old origin has been transformed and molded by centuries of...
La Catrina has become an iconic part of the Day of the Dead since its modern rendition was introduced in 1910 by printmaker José Guadalupe Posada. Each November 2, students from the local preparatory high school in Chapala, Jalisco, set up dozens...
Back in July, my friends Antonieta and Lucio invited me to their hometown in Oaxaca, to photograph the Fiesta de la Preciosa Sangre de Cristo or: the Fiesta of the Precious Blood of Christ. The fiesta in Teotitlán del Valle lasts 11 days and features three spectacular...
Back from a short long-weekend trip to the two small cities of Morelia and Pátzcuaro. It was my first trip to Michoacán and it was charming, especially the "pueblo mágico" of Pátzcuaro, whose buildings have terracotta roofs and are painted the standard magic town colors...
Have you ever seen a five-story, hand-assembled pyrotechnic castle exploding just a few meters in front of you? If not, you've probably never been to Mexico. But if you have, you might be asking, "Why don't I recall seeing something like that at...
San Cristóbal de las Casas, in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas, is a colonial city home to many old buildings, some dating to the original Spanish conquistadores almost 500 years ago. Though the buildings are beautiful, too many seem to be blighted by graffiti tags....
This past Tuesday was the Day of the Dead, my fifth in Mexico, and as always it was two beautiful days of traditions and remembrance, during one of Mexico's most famous, and most Mexican, of holidays.
I had an amazing time going from town to town visiting the cemeteries...
Last month I took a trip to Chiapas – and I went to Oventic, one of the headquarters of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). The Zapatistas are a peaceful resistance army of...
Mexico has thousands of towns and cities, and each one usually has its own patron saint and Marian devotion, each with its own unique way of celebrating its Catholic and indigenous history. In San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, we have the Fiesta de Los Panzones.
The...
Fishing is one of the important industries at Lake Chapala, Mexico, providing income and putting food on the table for some people. Though pole fishing is not uncommon, the most popular way to catch fish is with hand-thrown nets, tossed from a boat or by someone who's waded...
Here are a few images from the overcast February días de Carnaval in the bullring in Ajijic, Mexico. After a parade through town, the cowboys, kids and families end up at the local bullring for games, bull roping, horse dancing and other tricks.
All images © Dane Strom
