Isla de las Muñecas

Isla de las Muñecas ("Island of the Dolls") sits within the canals of Xochimilco, the remnant of the lake system and chinampa (floating garden) agriculture that once supported the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. According to the account passed down by his family, the island's caretaker, Julián Santana Barrera, found a young girl drowned in the canal near the island sometime in the 1950s, along with a doll floating nearby. Believing her spirit remained restless, he began hanging dolls — found in canal trash, given to him by neighbours, or bought with what little money he had — around the island to placate her, a practice he continued for over fifty years until hundreds of dolls, in every state of decay, hung from the trees and structures of the island.

In 2001, Santana was found dead in the canal at the exact spot, by his family's account, where he claimed to have found the drowned girl decades earlier — drowned, according to his nephew, while fishing. Whether the original story of the drowned girl is historical fact or a story Santana constructed (no official record of such a drowning has been located) remains unresolved. The island is now maintained by Santana's family as a tourist destination, reachable only by traditional flat-bottomed trajinera boats through the Xochimilco canals, with new dolls continually added by visitors.