In the land of Mayans and Aztecs, far hidden in the Sierra Madre's jungle, populated with exotic creatures such as
flamingos and boa constrictors, sparkles a gem, a unique sculpture garden, with haciendas, temples, pagodas and fountains, erupted under the spell and imagination of an eccentric English millionaire.

"Look, we move among a bunch of 'pseudo-realists',
who produce nothing but junk.
So, they try to act like madmen to justify themselves.
On the other hand, you who are real labor to act sane".
Salvador Dali to Edward James.

Edward James, was a British aristocrat, who loved surrealist art and as a collector, did commission and support artists such as Dali and Magritte, financed "Minotaure", a lavish Surrealist magazine published in Paris, or a series of Balanchine productions ; while entertaining  at Monkton House, on a large sofa to which Dalí gave the form and colour of Mae West's lips,  Picasso, Stravinsky, kurt Weill, Brecht, Aldous Huxley or Man Ray...  While war was raging, he left Europe in 1940, via The United States and then to Cuernavaca, in Mexico. Mesmerized by a land in Xilitla  "Lieu où l'on trouve des escargots", a lush tropical oasis of natural lagoons, Las Pozas, he began cultivating thousands of orchids with the help of a Yaqui indian, Plutarco Gastelum Esquer, before dedicate , with Carmelo Munoz Camacho in building a "château", his thébaÏde, projecting his architectural fantasies of an architect, poet, artist, who, In the 1970s, sold the world's largest and most important collection of Surrealist art to fund the garden. Surrealistic.
                                                            
Edward James by René Magritte, La Reproduction Interdite (1937).