Island of the Dead Dolls

This guide to the Island of the Dead Dolls in Mexico City follows Don Julian Santana Barrera, who came to farm this chinampa in Xochimilco in the 1950s and, by his own account, found a drowned girl near his plot and a doll floating in the same spot days later. It traces the decades that followed, when Julian began hearing whispers and footsteps and decided the girl's spirit wanted more dolls, fishing broken bodies from the canal and the neighborhood's rubbish dumps without ever cleaning what he found. Look closely at the trees as your trajinera drifts past, where each doll still hangs exactly as it arrived.