The family photograph from 1892 that everyone thought was innocent… until they noticed the babies’ hands in their mother’s arms

Three months after the photo shoot, the Herrera family was struck by a tragedy whose details remain unclear. Court records, newspaper clippings, and oral accounts differ, but all point to a night in June 1892 that shook Puebla. Domestic accident? Unexplained disappearance? The versions clash, and none provides a definitive answer.

When Don Abundio returned the original plates to the archives years later, the rumors resurfaced: some claimed the babies appeared too still, almost frozen, as if the photograph had captured more than life itself. Others, more rational, pointed out that the photographic technique required absolute stillness. The debate continues to this day between amateurs and historians.

A silent trace of the past

This portrait, now on display at the Puebla Historical Museum, continues to fascinate with its interplay of light and shadow. It reveals both the fragile beauty of a mother and her children, and the invisible weight of its era: the weight of social norms, the silence surrounding female suffering, and society’s rigid view of motherhood.

Visitors say that standing before the photograph evokes a unique emotion—a mixture of tenderness and unease. Perhaps because it reminds us that every old image, however simple, contains a thousand stories: those that have been told, those that have been silenced, and those that can be discerned in a glance.

More than a century later, the photograph of Catalina Ruiz and her twins continues to move us. Not because of the tragedy it evokes, but because it invites us to look beyond the image: to understand the silences, the vulnerabilities, and  the part of humanity that time never erases.