Mexico is the third-largest opium producer in the world, with half of the production being grown in its second-poorest state, Guerrero. The drug economy has transformed the social structure of the largely indigenous farming communities which have turned to poppy cultivation as a means of survival. The photographer put scratches and pinpricks into prints of the photographs to represent trauma and the scratching of the poppy flower during opium extraction, while the colour red represents drug violence and blood, but also life.