‘It’s time for us to go’: the Mexican fishing village swallowed by the sea

More than half of the homes in El Bosque, as well as its primary school, kindergarten and a main road have been wiped out by the sea. Photograph: Gustavo Graf/Pablo Montaño

Antonio Merlin watched from his living room window as the ocean inched closer to his home.

When the 55-year-old fisher built the concrete house with mosaic tile floors for his wife and four children in the village of El Bosque in 2002, the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico was nearly a kilometre away, a 15-minute walk from his back door.