The CAXCAN CRUX draws from a pivotal scene in Cabeza de Vaca, a cult Mexican film by multidisciplinary artist Nicolás Echevarría, born in Nayarit, the same Pacific region where Álvarez Tostado was raised. Inspired by the 16th-century chronicle Naufragios by Spanish conquistador Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, the film follows his years-long journey across northern Mexico after a shipwreck in Florida. In its closing sequence, enslaved Indigenous men carry a monumental metallic cross across the desert, its polished surface appearing strangely anachronistic, like science fiction in the past tense. Crafted in wood and abalone shell, Álvarez Tostado’s cross employs trompe-l’œil to produce an illusion of depth, its iridescent surface shifting between flat image and sculptural volume. Both devotional and political, the work reflects on evangelization, forced labor, and the imposition of belief. It also invokes the historical presence of the Caxcan people native to Northwestern Mexico and points to current tensions surrounding land, borders, labor, immigration, displacement, colonization, identity and cultural survival. Past, present and future, collapsing into a singular object.