IXTLILCO EL GRANDE

In Ixtlilco el Grande, a small town in Morelos, every 16 September the Simulacro de los Mecos is held, a reenactment that revives the struggle of Mexico’s Indigenous people against Spanish Royalist troops during the 1810 War of Independence. In 2022, after two years of forced isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pedro Meyer set off on an adventure to this place accompanied by his photographer friends Ricardo Espinosa Orozco (“REO”), Pablo Ortiz Monasterio (“Monas”), Enrique Villaseñor (“Villa”) and Ricardo Maldonado (“El Tapir”), to explore local traditions and spend time with its residents. On this trip, due to his physical limitations, Meyer reflected on the photographic act and on what it means to remain in one place capturing images, while his colleagues moved about everywhere. The celebration, in which red paint symbolises the sacrifice of the insurgents, reveals not only a deep connection to the past, but also the universality of human values, evoking the concept of the “melting pot” as a metaphor for cultural fusion and the repetition of patterns shared across time and space.