In September, we celebrate Mexico’s independence—and beyond history and tradition, it’s also the perfect moment to look toward the corners that make our country so diverse and astonishing.
There are places that feel dreamlike, others that carry unsettling legends, some that intrigue with their strangeness, and many that wrap us in a profoundly mystical air.
This special feature is an invitation to explore sites that aren’t always on the list of the “typical” or the “expected,” but which reflect Mexico’s cultural, spiritual, and even enigmatic richness. Spaces where the magical and the unusual coexist, reminding us that our land is filled with stories that go far beyond the obvious.
San Juan Chamula: Where Smoke Meets Spirit
In the highlands of Chiapas lies San Juan Chamula, a place where time folds in on itself and two worlds—ancient and colonial—remain in constant dialogue.
Step inside the Temple of San Juan, and you cross into a realm unlike any other. The floor is blanketed in fresh pine needles, as if the forest itself has been invited in. Hundreds of candles flicker in vibrant colors, their flames glowing low to the ground, offerings that seem to breathe with the walls themselves. Catholic saints stand tall in their niches, yet at their feet, Maya rituals still breathe—whispers of an older rhythm that never vanished.
Here, faith is not singular but layered. Eggs absorb illness, Coca-Cola releases the spirit through a sacred burp, and pox—the ancestral corn-based liquor—flows as a bridge between the living and the divine. In San Juan Chamula, smoke rises not only from candles but from the breath of centuries, carrying voices that blur the line between past and present.
Pátzcuaro & Janitzio: Where the Dead Return in Bloom
On the waters of Lake Pátzcuaro, a single island rises—Janitzio, the sacred heart of Michoacán’s Day of the Dead. Here, the boundary between the living and the departed is not a wall, but a veil woven of marigolds, candles, and whispered prayers.
Every year, families cross the dark waters in canoes illuminated by candlelight, carrying offerings of bread, flowers, and photographs. The island becomes a sea of flame, where every candle is a soul remembered and every flower a thread tying the present to eternity. At dawn, the cemetery glows like an altar of stars laid upon the earth.
Janitzio is not only a place, but a return. A promise that the dead do not vanish, but bloom again each year, carried back by the scent of cempasúchil and the light of devotion.
Santa María del Oro: Crater of Fire and Water
In the highlands of Nayarit, cradled by mountains and silence, lies Santa María del Oro—a lake unlike any other. It was once a volcano: a mouth of fire and magma that roared into the sky, reshaping the land with fury. Over centuries, that fire gave way to water, filling the crater with a mirror that reflects both sky and myth.
Legend tells of a forbidden love—of a princess and a warrior whose passion defied their world. The gods, enraged, unleashed destruction, leaving behind the crater as a scar of longing. Yet from that scar, beauty emerged: waters that shift from emerald to sapphire, as if the lake itself still holds the moods of its story.
To stand by Santa María del Oro is to look into a memory written in stone and water. A reminder that destruction and creation are never far apart, and that even fire leaves behind a soul of blue.
Guanajuato — City of Underground Echoes
Beneath the colorful facades of Guanajuato lies another world—an underground labyrinth of tunnels carved from stone and shadow. Once rivers, now roads, these passages carry the whispers of centuries through their damp walls.
Above ground, life bursts in hues of ochre, pink, and cobalt. Below, the city speaks in echoes—of miners who once descended in search of silver, of lovers who sought refuge in hidden alleys, of legends etched into the stone like veins of memory. It is a city built twice: one that dazzles in daylight, and one that breathes in silence below.
To walk Guanajuato is to walk through duality—light and shadow, color and stone, surface and depth. A city where even silence carries a voice.
Yucatán: Where Fire Became Water
Sixty-six million years ago, a cosmic force struck the Earth with unimaginable power. The crater it left behind still lies in the Yucatán Peninsula, invisible beneath the ground yet shaping the destiny of the land. Where fire once fell, now lies water: the cenotes, sacred wells that the Maya revered as portals to the underworld.
These pools, hidden in caves and jungles, shimmer with crystalline depths. They are places of offering and reflection, where the surface of the water is not an end but a threshold. To descend into a cenote is to step into a womb of stone and silence, where time dissolves and the world above fades away.
Here, fire became water, destruction became creation. The cenotes remind us that from endings come beginnings, and that beneath the earth, the past still waits, alive and luminous.
