A gray burro disappears beneath an impossibly large mound of fresh-cut green fodder in this brilliantly hand-colored early Mexican postcard — its handler, a small figure in straw hat, red blouse, and huaraches, barely visible behind the load, stands patiently in a sun-bleached plaza with what appears to be a colonial church façade rising in the background. Labeled simply "Loaded burro" in red script, the card is a quintessential "costumbrista" image: the working animals and rural labor that defined daily Mexican life at the turn of the twentieth century, packaged for the tourist trade and mailed — or kept — as a window into another world. The back carries the Republica Mexicana Tarjeta Postal imprint with publisher I. G. Hatton, Mexico, No. 1356, and the card is unused with an ink pencil notation on the reverse.