There's a need for hard work, a spiritual need to ask forgiveness, to pray, and so it makes for a strange relationship between death, passion, and spirituality. For a long time, Spaniards, who are the owners of the flocks, have contracted with the Mixtec Indians to do the killing. For them it's a job that pays very little, but there's spiritual aspect that manifests itself in the praying and asking forgiveness. Maybe the Indians, because of their own conditions in life, need the ritual to forget about the misery they live in. For this project in particular, I had to enter a kind of guiding trance to see quickly, to photograph quickly, to not interrupt their work, and I worked very few days. The trance helped me forget the pain of the goats and the pain of the Indians.
All works are $6,000*
* - with the exception of Retrato de familia, La Mixteca, Oaxaca, 1992