Light and dark in a world of Covid

A region in West Central part of Mexico, where crime and violence reigns, discovers a new common threat with Covid-19.



The inadequate transformation of a rural cottage to respond to the challenges of Covid-19. Desolation and sadness, a contrast of light and shadow, life and mystery, shelves full of empty hopes and desks without notebooks and pens.



Life is only provided by rays of light that penetrate through holes created by time and neglect in the wooden ceilings. A gallery of images made of saints and virgins populate some of the walls, invoking protection and shelter.

A picture of a dead person whose only elements are a sheet that wraps him, a cot that supports him, and a ray of light that protects him. A body that seems embalmed and that remains us, as Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer wrote, “so fearful and sad.. that I thought for a moment, my God, the dead are left alone”.



A healthy distance that is not observed by patients and a wrecked sofa that doesn’t help. A washing machine that doesn’t wash and a roof that doesn’t cover. A form of absence that in the presence of oblivion increases suffering and the dead toll. A white personal protective equipment that matches the wrapped body and make us think that the rural world needs much more colours to confront the pandemic.



Spaces without flowers and enough words and explanations, where only the sleeping soul of the dead vibrates to the beat of prayers that have been removed from the place by the force of contagion. And some cracked woods that silenced their complaints, imprisoned by the narrow landscape of a country cottage that reminds us that Covid-19 is no longer an urban crisis.





Exhausted and tireless, with a soul full of medicines, a nurse or a doctor approaches the sick, empty handed.



Time runs in the makeshift waiting rooms, gloomy and sad, welcoming patients and the sick, hoping that a miracle will come to that wooden cabin.