Mexico’s Day of the Dead: A Multidimensional Gathering
In any dollar store today, right next to the Halloween goods, you’ll find colorful skulls and plastic decorations for the Mexican festival called Day of the Dead.
It’s another attempt to commodify culture, and although I would prefer that people actually buy handcrafts made by Mexican artisans, such as cut-out paper of papel picado — paper maché sculptures and skeletons — I am content that the Day of the Dead has seduced the American unconscious and its cultural landscape.
The Day of the Dead is a tradition anchored in multidimensional gatherings that connect the dead and the living for a few days so that the living can remember those who have left us and they get to visit us once again.
The logic behind it is simple: the dead have a vacation and come to visit. The living, as a result, must be prepared.
The altars we set at the center of our homes to lure them have candles, flowers (cockscomb celosias and yellow Mexican marigolds), food (normally tamales and dishes such as mole), drinks (coffee, chocolate, tequila, brandy), fruits (tangerines, caramelized pumpkin, and other delicacies), candy, religious imagery, photos and mementos of the departed, and special decorations, such as sugar skulls and skeletons.
Candles illuminate the altar so the departed can find it. A path of marigold petals shows them the way. The flowers' aroma and incense enchant the dead and the living. Toys and special mementos (such as cards or games) are for the young.
We cook and offer the visitors tamales stuffed with chicken or pork, with green or red sauce — a homemade dish that requires an entire day and the whole family to prepare. While one mixes the corn dough, another prepares the salsas, another fills the corn husks, and someone else prepares the steam-pot.
We offer a round, sweet bread called "Bread of the Dead," often flavored with orange flower water and anise and decorated with colored sugar or sesame seeds. This bread is made only for this holiday and decorated with small “bones” and “knuckles.” Our food offerings seek to make the dead feel loved and remembered. They eat the “essence” of the food and leave the rest for us to enjoy.
One of the most beautiful items placed on our altars is a glass of water and a small bowl with salt, not for our family or friends but for the dead, who have come to earth and do not have a house in which to rest. We take care of them, too, by satiating their thirst and purifying their way.
Around the altar, multicolored sugar or chocolate skulls and elegant paper skeletons frame the food. These skulls appear in every market during the season with our names on them. We go to stand after stand seeking our names on the skulls because, first, they are delicious and, second, they remind us of our mortality — by showing our future selves.
In Mexican schools, students write “calaveras” or short humorous poems that immortalize teachers or prominent figures by imagining them in the afterlife.
There are also altar contests, and schools, government offices, and organizations compete to show the biggest flowered arch, the highest pyramid, or the most original composition.
The Day of the Dead is one of the happiest times in Mexican culture.
Although these holidays take place mostly on November 2, multi-day celebration ends in a crescendo. On October 29 and 30, we welcome the forgotten or lonely; on October 31, those who suffered an accident; on November 1, the children; and on November 2, all are welcomed and united. I believe that it is the combination of delicious food, colorful decor, celebration, and togetherness that makes us rejoice.
The Day of the Dead is also one of the most pagan holidays celebrated in Mexico. Its origins are in Mexican or Nahua culture, that is, the ethnic group that faced the Spanish conquistadors in 1519.
Mexicans conceived a continuity between Mictlan (the Land of the Dead), the Earth, and Pantitlán (Land of the Divine). All people who died would traverse, as in a rite of passage, seven stages (fighting raging dogs, crossing spiked rocky lands, and more) in order to — finally — be considered truly dead. Once they arrived at the end of the path, their souls would rest peacefully forever.
In the Nahua calendar, there were times to celebrate the living and times to celebrate the dead. We still do that, as the magnificent altars, with all their food, drinks, bread, and candy are supposed to be devoured, slowly but surely, after November 2.
Undoubtedly, Mexicans have always had a peculiar relationship with human death and Death personified. Even today, Mexican cartels idolize a pseudo-saint named the “Holy Death.” Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz noted that Mexicans are not afraid of death, because we face it head-on, knowing that it is just another rite of passage.
Although there were strong roots in Mexican or Nahua culture, the Day of the Dead did not become what it is now until the 1930s, when the president Lázaro Cárdenas institutionalized it as part of nationalist cultural policies.
José Guadalupe Posada, a popular engraver, immortalized the sublime Catrina, a luxuriously-dressed female skeleton who lures the living, maybe leading them to their death, maybe just enchanting them with a kiss.
Elsa Malvido, a Mexican anthropologist, notes that death was an animated figure in medieval Europe (as in the macabre dances), and that the Day of the Dead tradition is enmeshed with All Hallow's Eve (Halloween), All Saints Day (Nov. 1), and All Souls' Day (Nov. 2). However, it is clear that Mexicans were not copying Spanish traditions, but instead were putting their own spin on them. Today, in most regions of the world, colorful and animated skulls equal Mexican culture and our irreverent approach to the end of life.
This cultural phenomenon is expressed differently across the country.
In Michoacán, by Lake Pátzcuaro — home of the Purepecha natives — the Day of the Dead is a mise-en-scene, with the entire island of Janitzio covered in marigolds and altars. The cemetery by the water's edge spills flowers into the lake and by midnight, small boats arrive at the shore and a musical battle in which mariachis and tríos compete takes place. Among the graves, families share food and prayers, inviting their loved ones. Light, music, food, and fiesta bring the living and the dead together for one night, as the wall between the different dimensions dissolves.
In Naolinco, Veracruz, groups of young and old make a house-by-house pilgrimage, singing short songs. Each house welcomes them by offering food from their altars, consisting of tamales and small cups of homemade fruit liqueurs. At dusk, a bone is buried and with it, the holiday and season comes to an end.
The Day of the Dead is not only multi-faceted, it is ever-changing.
After the James Bond franchise came to Mexico and organized a Catrinas parade, Mexico City kept the new tradition and now, every year, a beautiful Catrinas parade outdoes the previous year.
The Day of the Dead's allure is also transnational. The celebration is at the core of many Mexican and North American animations, such as the Mexican short film, Hasta los Huesos; the animated film, Día de Muertos; the English-language film, The Book of Life; and, of course, Coco, the most mainstream film yet. Coco is the most scandalous, too, because the Walt Disney Corporation sought to patent the name and commercialize our entire cultural heritage, putting it on the level of a dollar store!
When I analyze the Day of the Dead traditions with my students and we talk about death, we note the different cultural approaches.
In the United States, as in many other western countries, death is a sad, uncomfortable, and taboo topic. Dead people are buried and left in cemeteries, and they represent loss and pain.
When my students encounter the Day of the Dead tradition and think about “vacationing” with those who have left us, I believe that they experience a dual feeling: first, a memento mori or the awareness of their own mortality and frailty, and second, carpe diem or the exhilarating joy of being alive.
I also believe that by embracing this Mexican tradition, they can invoke their dead, by inviting them to their house, to their altars, and gather one more time with them, just before the gates between the living and the dead close.
Elena Deanda, Ph.D. (she, her/s, ella), is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Washington College, where she is also the Director of the Black Studies Program. She is President of the Ibero-American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies, MLA Delegate of the 18th and 19th Spanish and Iberian Forum, and Guest Co-Editor of the Journal of Gender and Sexuality Studies 48.2 (2022).
© Common Sense for the Eastern Shore, 2024
Title image: Pond at Pickering Creek Audubon Center, Talbot Co. Photo: Jan Plotczyk
