Since I was a child, death was not an abstract concept or a topic avoided at home for me. It had a name, a face, and a story: Rocío, my sister who passed away at the age of 3, before I was born. I never knew her, but she was always present in family conversations, in the stored photographs, and above all, in the altar that was erected in her memory every November in my house. It was through these offerings that I began to understand death not as absence, but as a constant presence.

     For more than twenty years, I have had the privilege of traveling with my camera to places like Oaxaca, Puebla, Guanajuato, Mexico City, Tzintzuntzan, and Pátzcuaro, following the trail of a tradition that has taught me more about life than about death: The Celebration of the Day of the Dead. In every corner, I have discovered how Mexicans transform absence into presence, and mourning into celebration.

     The Day of the Dead is not a date on the calendar; it is a bridge built between two worlds, a spiritual bond that represents the belief that the deceased return home to live with their families. This millenary tradition, which UNESCO recognized as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2003, has its roots in pre-Hispanic cultures. For the indigenous peoples, death was not an end but a continuation, another step in the eternal cycle of existence. When Catholicism was imposed during the colony, these beliefs mixed with the festivities of All Saints and the Faithful Departed, giving rise to one of the most representative expressions of Mexican cultural syncretism.

     The tradition dictates that the souls return on specific dates: on October 28, those who died in accidents arrive, on October 31 the unbaptized children, on November 1 the children, and on November 2 the adults. Each journey requires its own offering to reach your final destination, its own altar loaded with meanings: The water to quench thirst after their long journey, the salt so that the body does not corrupt itself on its round trip, the copal smoke to purify the environment, and the "cempasúchil" flowers of intense orange color and penetrating aroma to mark the path during the journey.

     Over the years, I have learned that each community celebrates this celebration differently. In Oaxaca, the altars are filled with cut paper, sugar skulls, and photographs; the streets transform into a carnival of colors and music. In Pátzcuaro, the night is illuminated by thousands of candles that float over the lake, while families keep vigil in silence next to the tombs adorned with marigold flowers. Photographing the Day of the Dead is a complete sensory experience. Cold nights with copal smoke enveloping the scene, candles defining the light contrasts, "cempazúchil" petals marking symbolic routes, and the murmur of the people mixing with songs, laughter, and prayers. A photographic experience where capturing the emotion and this atmosphere becomes more important than the composition or the perfect photo.

     The photographs taken over these years are visual records of the collective memory of a people who refuse to forget. Each image is a form of resistance against forgetting and the passage of time, a dialogue between the visible and the invisible, between those who are and those who have left; because in the end, photography and tradition share in this case a common purpose: to preserve memory and the permanence of remembrance, since to die is not to disappear, it is to transform into history, into memory, into image.