From 1992 to 2005, the photographer Pablo Ortiz Monasterio frequented different villages near Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl. For the author, this book, co-edited with RM, is a kind of genesis made of photographic stones, “a found memory of our ancestors, ‘the ancients’, when they were mountains, primordial days of the volcano and the volcanic man”.

The images, mostly in colour, are accompanied by texts by tlacuilos Antonio Saborit, Margo Glantz and Alfonso Morales.

This book, an assemblage of photographic pieces, had an uncertain genesis. A contradictory memory of our ancestros, “the ancients”, when they were mountains, the primordial days of the volcano-woman and volcano-man, an age of giants that inhabit our imagination and of geological forces that give a body and face to the Nation. In the center of Mexico it is common to find painted walls, ceramic Ware, calendars, key chains, drums, ashtrays, pony glasses, and a long etcetera of decorative objects bearing depictions of foundational myths.