Crimson, sienna yellow, lavender, sky-blue, hot orange: the façades of Xico blaze with colour. Somehow they echo the surroundings: lush, rolling hills, bamboo, banana, sugar-cane and coffee plantations, trout-filled mountain streams, waterfalls and tropical blooms. In short, cornucopia.
Sticky hot days melt into cool nights, misty mornings are broken by cocks, parrots and dogs, while church bells toll incessantly and farmers on horseback clip-clop unhurriedly by. Lost in the hills of the Mexican state of Veracruz, this market town is allegedly a hotbed of brujas, or witches – even the main bakery is manned by an all-male team of self-dubbed brujos. Outside, the streets seem to be monopolised by tiny women in pinafores, single plaits dangling down their backs, shoulders wrapped in a rebozo (shawl), capacious shopping-bags hooked over their arms. Determined and sure-footed, they’re off to the market – or is it the coven?
