A crowd gathers beneath a corrugated roof, their faces rendered in quick, sharp lines, each figure caught in the restless shuffle of a city’s underbelly. The artist, José Guadalupe Posada, fills the scene with a sense of noisy commotion: men with hats tipped low, a bartender behind his counter, and groups huddled in animated conversation or solitary contemplation. The text above and below the image frames the illustration as both a lament and a spectacle, inviting the viewer to read the woes of the cantineros and the “pobres borrachitos” as part of the picture’s drama.

The border of the print, like a stage curtain, draws the eye inward, focusing attention on the chaotic yet strangely orderly world inside. This print, created around 1903, belongs to a period in Mexico when illustrated broadsides—cheap, mass-produced sheets—were a staple of popular culture. Such works, often sold in markets or on street corners, gave voice to the anxieties and humor of the urban poor, mixing social critique with entertainment. Posada became famous for these images, which captured the daily life and struggles of ordinary people with biting wit and a keen sense for the theatrical.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art now preserves this example, a testament to how these humble prints, once ephemeral, have become windows into the vanished streets and voices of turn-of-the-century Mexico. Look again at the faces in the crowd—each one a story, each line a fragment of a city’s memory.