Mexico has a long history of wearing masks to represent different characters.

Mixtec mask on a wooden face at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon, US. The Mixtecs occupied the area around Oaxaca. Turquoise and coral inlaid mask of jade from the Meso-American city of Teotihuacan, a huge ruined city of unknown inhabitants near Mexico City, at the city’s Museum of Anthropology.Aztec dancer dressed as a skeleton with an extraordinary feathered headdress near the Templo Mayor in Mexico City. Acrobatic roosters fly at one another at the amphitheatre in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Folk art mask with fur, horsehair and horns in the Puebla Museum.Gigante, in a half-mask, with more characters hidden under her skirts, and a suave skeleton, performing a song and dance at the acrobatic show at the amphitheatre in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.  Fan with a Luchas Libres mask at the Arena in Mexico City where the epic battles between these masked wrestlers take place. December 2019, pre-COVID, the cooks are wearing masks while preparing food at a stall in the Puerto Escondido Market, Mexico. They told me that the market has a cleanliness mandate, and for a market it was spotless. Masked mannequins, all looking rather fit and spiffy, in a men’s clothing shop in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. From left to right they represent Kim Jong-un (Supreme Leader of North Korea), Vladimir Putin (President of Russia), Donald Trump (President of the United States) and Manuel Obrador (el presidente de México).  Pretty scary masks, eh?More of Nancy Merrill’s Photo Challenge: Masks.