This is the famous photo taken by one of the rare indigenous photographers Martín Chambi in 1929, called Campesinos en el juzgado (Peasants at court). Eyes, faces, feet, hats, carpet, furniture, possibly solicitors... A photo of contradictions demonstrating the power of colonial jurisdiction to create legal subjects (and while doing so creating itself) in it composition.
This image is also the beginning of an co-written by B. Premo and Y. Yannakakis titled 'A Court of Sticks and Branches: Indian Jurisdiction in Colonial Mexico and Beyond'.[1]
"To shift attention to native jurisdiction and indigenous judges under Spanish colonialism rather than native litigants in colonial courts presided over by Spanish officials, we ventured that the existing historiography risked reproducing the idea that indigenous legal subjects “went to court, hat in hand,” in their quest for justice and, as a result, reinforced, unwittingly or cumulatively, colonial power and their own subordination. We took that line out and put it back in various drafts, but we remembered it again when we looked anew at Chambi’s photo: the hats on the carpet next to the bare feet; the gaze of the suited, bespectacled, presumably mestizo man on the left and the others behind the Indian legal subjects patiently waiting in the juzgado, or court."
You can read the rest of the article at the hyperlink below.
[1] Bianca Premo, Yanna Yannakakis, A Court of Sticks and Branches: Indian Jurisdiction in Colonial Mexico and Beyond, The American Historical Review, Volume 124, Issue 1, February 2019, Pages 28–55