The ice cream seller was doing business from a well-worn stall

In Tuxtla Gutiérrez, ice-cream carts seem to bloom on every corner like stubborn desert flowers. The sun in southern Mexico doesn’t simply shine—it presses down, heavy and unblinking, until even the shade feels like a bowl of lukewarm soup draped over your skin. In that heat, the man in my photograph sat beside his weathered three-wheeled cart, waiting without a word for anyone who might need a brief, melting reprieve.

The cart’s side panel was painted with the faded promise Ricos Helados—“Delicious Ice Cream.” Whether the ice cream truly deserved the compliment was unclear, but at the very least it was indisputably cold, and that alone counted as a luxury in this climate. In the metal containers before him, scoops of pink, white, and an occasional, slightly alarming shade of blue glistened softly, each one surrendering a little to the heat. Selling ice cream here is less a business than a daily battle with the sun, and the sun usually wins.

As I stood there, a woman passed by carrying a stack of papers against her chest. Her gaze stayed fixed on the ground, as though avoiding the sunlight required its own kind of concentration. She didn’t spare the ice-cream cart a single glance. Perhaps she worked at a municipal office or a local school—her face carried that familiar mix of tension and fatigue found in people who deal with forms all day. For a moment, the two figures—the weary vendor fighting the heat and the overworked woman fighting time—crossed paths without acknowledging each other, each wrapped in their own small struggle under the punishing sky.