Daybreak
in the graveyard of Mazatlán de Flores, Oaxaca.
Photography: Lourdes Grobet.
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This
is an ancient festivity that has been much transformed through
the years, but which was intended in prehispanic Mexico to
celebrate children and the dead. Hence, the best way to
describe this Mexican holiday is to say that it is a time when
Mexican families remember their dead, and the continuity of
life.
Two
important things to know about the Mexican Day of the Dead (Día
de los Muertos) are:
- It
is a holiday with a complex history, and therefore its
observance varies quite a bit by region and by degree of
urbanization.
- It
is not a morbid occasion, but rather a festive time.
The
original celebration can be traced to many Mesoamerican native
traditions, such as the festivities held during the Aztec
month of Miccailhuitontli, ritually presided by the
"Lady of the Dead" (Mictecacihuatl), and
dedicated to children and the dead. In the Aztec calendar,
this ritual fell roughly at the end of the Gregorian month of
July and the beginning of August, but in the postconquest era
it was moved by Spanish priests so that it coincided with the
Christian holiday of All Hallows Eve (in Spanish: "Día
de Todos Santos.") This was a vain effort to transform
the observance from a profane to a Christian celebration. The
result is that Mexicans now celebrate the day of the dead
during the first two days of November, rather than at the
beginning of summer. But remember the dead they still do, and
the modern festivity is characterized by the traditional
Mexican blend of ancient aboriginal and introduced Christian
features.
Generalizing
broadly, the holiday's activities consist of families (1)
welcoming their dead back into their homes, and (2) visiting
the graves of their close kin. At the cemetery, family members
engage in sprucing up the gravesite, decorating it with
flowers, setting out and enjoying a picnic, and interacting
socially with other family and community members who gather
there. In both cases, celebrants believe that the souls of the
dead return and are all around them. Families remember the
departed by telling stories about them. The meals prepared for
these picnics are sumptuous, usually featuring meat dishes in
spicy sauces, chocolate beverages, cookies, sugary confections
in a variety of animal or skull shapes, and a special
egg-batter bread ("pan de muerto," or bread of the
dead). Gravesites and family altars are profusely decorated
with flowers (primarily large, bright flowers such as
marigolds and chrysanthemums), and adorned with religious
amulets and with offerings of food, cigarettes and alcoholic
beverages. Because of this warm social environment, the
colorful setting, and the abundance of food, drink and good
company, this commemoration of the dead has pleasant overtones
for the observers, in spite of the open fatalism exhibited by
all participants, whose festive interaction with both the
living and the dead in an important social ritual is a way of
recognizing the cycle of life and death that is human
existence.
Altar
in a home of the Nahuatl village of Milpa Alta.
Photography: Lourdes Grobet.
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In
homes observant families create an altar and decorate it with
items that they believe are beautiful and attractive to the
souls of their departed ones. Such items include offerings of
flowers and food, but also things that will remind the living
of the departed (such as their photographs, a diploma, or an
article of clothing), and the things that the dead prized and
enjoyed while they lived. This is done to entice the dead and
assure that their souls actually return to take part in the
remembrance. In very traditional settings, typically found
only in native communities, the path from the street to the
altar is actually strewn with petals to guide the returning
soul to its altar and the bosom of the family.The traditional
observance calls for departed children to be remembered during
the first day of the festivity (the Day of the Little Angels,
"Día de los Angelitos"), and for adults to be
remembered on the second day. Traditionally, this is
accompanied by a feast during the early morning hours of
November the 2nd, the Day of the Dead proper, though modern
urban Mexican families usually observe the Day of the Dead
with only a special family supper featuring the bread of the
dead. In southern Mexico, for example in the city of Puebla,
it is good luck to be the one who bites into the plastic toy
skeleton hidden by the baker in each rounded loaf. Friends and
family members give one another gifts consisting of sugar
skeletons or other items with a death motif, and the gift is
more prized if the skull or skeleton is embossed with one's
own name. Another variation found in the state of Oaxaca is
for bread to be molded into the shape of a body or burial
wrap, and for a face to be embedded on one end of the loaf.
During the days leading up to and following the festivity,
some bakeries in heavily aboriginal communities cease
producing the wide range of breads that they typically sell so
that they can focus on satisfying the demand for bread of the
dead.
Preparing
offerings on the eve of the first of November in
Ihuatzio, Michoacán. Photography: Lourdes Grobet.
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The
Day of the Dead can range from being a very important cultural
event, with defined social and economic responsibilities for
participants (exhibiting the socially equalizing behavior that
social anthropologists would call redistributive feasting,
e.g. on the island of Janitzio in Michoacan state), to being a
religious observance featuring actual worship of the dead
(e.g., as in Cuilapan, Oaxaca, an ancient capital of the
Zapotec people, who venerated their ancestors and whose
descendants do so to this day, an example of many traditional
practices that Spanish priests pretend not to notice), to
simply being a uniquely Mexican holiday characterized by
special foods and confections (the case in all large Mexican
cities.)
In
general, the more urban the setting within Mexico the less
religious and cultural importance is retained by observants,
while the more rural and Indian the locality the greater the
religious and economic import of the holiday. Because of this,
this observance is usually of greater social importance in
southern Mexico than in the northern part of the country. |