According to local legend, a girl drowned in the Xochimilco canals outside of Mexico City decades ago. After her untimely death, dolls began washing up on the shore of a small island in the canal where she died. Tormented that he couldn’t save the girl, the island’s caretaker, Don Julian Santana Barrera, began to hang the dolls from the island’s trees in her memory.
The Island of Dolls is now “dedicated to the lost soul of a poor girl who met her fate too soon in strange circumstances”, Rushali Ramteke said.