Bénédicte Desrus

Women clean the bones and skulls of their deceased relatives from the Uitz Poot family at the cemetery of Pomuch, Campeche state, Mexico, on Oct. 22, 2022.

Each year, members of the Pomuch community in Mexico’s Campeche state on the Yucatán Peninsula carefully extract bones from their loved ones’ burial niches and clean them by hand. The ritual, known as Choo Ba’ak, dates back to ancient Mayan times and is done after a person has been dead for three years.