Descansos en Mexico

The rainy season has come to the Pacific Northwest and so the wife and I increasingly go looking for warmth and sunshine. Usually that means going to Sunriver, Oregon on deadly Highway 97 but last week we were able to spend time in Mexico on the Baja peninsula.

Knowing that Mexico is a heavily Catholic country, and knowing that descansos are primarily a Catholic way to memorialize the dead, I was pretty sure that I would have a lot to photograph.

I underestimated the situation.

From city streets to remote highways, from small anonymous crosses to the most elaborate memorials I have ever seen.

The descansos I found in this part of Mexico were nearly all much more elaborate than those I have photographed in the Pacific Northwest. Most were planted on cement poured for the memorial, made of metal, and elaborately decorated.

I was able to shoot eight memorials in just the few hours I had a car to use, and I had to pass at least that many because there wasn’t a safe place to park on the side of the highway, all within an half-hour’s drive from Cabo San Lucas.

Sad, but beautiful.

I am going back to Baja in a few weeks and will have a car the entire time. I will also have my Hasselblad 907X which is what I have shot most of my work with in this series instead of the Leica Q2 I used to take the shots on this page.

One of the memorials I saw was so elaborate I wasn’t sure it was actually a descanso; but, written squarely on the plaque, there it was: