Chalma, Mexico

In 1539, after the arrival of the Augustinians, the Señor de Chalma appeared miraculously in a cave dedicated to an indigenous deity. As worded in an account written in 1810 by the prior of the Chalma monastery, “they found the sacred image of our sovereign redeemer Jesus Christ crucified, placed on the same altar where the detestable idol had been before, now knocked down to the floor, reduced to fragments.” The crosses on the hills in the photographs that follow are placed and maintained by pilgrim groups, and the garlands are worn by pilgrims on their first visit. The final photographs in the selection show the sacred cypress at Ahuehuete, a devotional site on one of the pilgrim routes to Chalma.