Day of the Dead, or Díade Muertos, is an ever-evolving festival whose earliest roots can be traced back to the Aztecs of present-day central Mexico. The Aztecs commemorated the dead with skulls a thousand years before the Celebration of the Day of the Dead. The skull, like the skull once placed on an Aztec temple, remains a key symbol in this tradition, which lasted for more than six centuries in annual celebrations to honor and exchange with those who have passed away.
Once the Spaniards conquered the Aztec Empire in the 16th century, the Catholic Church moved the indigenous celebrations and ceremonies of the full year to the Catholic date of 1 and 2 November to commemorate Halloween and All Souls' Day. Díade Muertos on November 2, Latin American indigenous traditions and symbols of the memory of the dead merge with unofficial Catholic customs and notions of the afterlife. The same thing happened on November 1 in honor of the dead child.
Day of the Dead traditions
On November 1, 2015, at a cemetery in Tzintzuntzan, Michoacan, Mexico, families decorated the graves of relatives with flowers.
During these rituals, people build altars in their homes with ofrendas to offer to the souls of loved ones. Candles illuminate photographs of the deceased and objects left behind. The family read letters and poems, telling anecdotes and jokes about the dead. Tamales, chili peppers, water, tequila and pan de muerto are special breads of this occasion, arranged by bright orange or yellow cempasúchil flowers, calendulas, whose strong scent helps to guide the soul home.
Koba incense, which was used in ancient times for rituals, was lit to attract the spirit. Clay molded sugar skulls are decorated with feathers, foil and frosting, and the names of the deceased are written on the forehead. The altar includes all four elements of life: water, earth food, candles of fire and candles of wind, paper towels, colored tissue paper folk art, cut design flowing through the altar or wall. Some homes also include a Christian cross or a statue of our Lady of Guadalupe, the patron saint on the Altar of Mexico.
In Mexico, families clear graves in cemeteries in preparation for the arrival of souls. On the evening of November 2, they took food to the cemetery to attract souls and participate in community celebrations. Bands perform and people dance to please visiting souls.
"When you forget them, people really die, and when you think about them, they live in your mind, and they live in your heart," said journalist Mary J. Andrade, a journalist who has eight books on anniversaries. death. "When people create an altar, they are thinking about the one who has left, thinking about their own death, becoming strong and accepting it with dignity."
Celebrate the dead becoming part of the national culture
After independence from Spain in 1821, 50 governments ruled Mexico, continuing to mourn and communicate with the dead during a tumultuous 36 years. When the Mexican Liberal Party led by Benito Juarez won the War of Reform in December 1860, the separation of churches and churches prevailed, but Díade Muertos remained a religious celebration for many in the heart of rural Mexico. Elsewhere, the festival became more secular and became popular as part of the national culture. Some people use the tradition of festivals as a form of political commentary. Just as friends of the dead wrote funny epitaphs in their homes to honor them, some wrote calaveras literarias —short poems and mock epitaphs— to mock living politicians or political criticism in the media.
Claudio Romnitz, an anthropologist at Columbia University and author of Death and the Mexican Idea, said: "This kind of thing happens while looking more closely at the altar of the family. "They're not opposed to each other."
The rise of La Caterina
La Caterina, c. 1910.
On mexico's booming political art scene in the early 20th century, printmaker and peace printmaker Jose Guadalupe Posada put caravila or skull and skull images into his artwork to mock politicians and comment on revolutionary politics, religion, and death. His most famous work, La Calavera Catrina or Elegant Skeleton, was a 1910 zinc etching featuring female bones. The purpose of this satirical work is to depict a woman who uses a French dress, a fancy hat and plenty of cosmetics to mask her indigenous cultural traditions to make her skin look whiter. The original La Caterina flyer, published a year before the Mexican Revolution in 1911, was titled "Those who garbanceras wear makeup today will eventually become deformed skulls." ”
La Catrina became the public image of the festival Díade Muertos in parades and revelries. A mural by Mexican painter Diego Rivera, completed in 1947, places a Hurricane Katrina in a gorgeous robe in the center, depicting the end of Mexico's War of Independence. La Catrina's elegant "playboy" costume symbolizes a mocking celebration, while the smile on her pompous exterior reminds revelers of the common fate of accepting death.
The skull of the protest, the testimony of blood
For decades, celebrations honoring the skulls of the dead and all of them spread north to other parts of Mexico and much of the United States and abroad. Schools and museums from East Coast to West Coast display altars and teach kids how to cut colorful papel picado folk art to represent the wind to help souls come home.
In the 1970s, the Chicano movement used public altars, art exhibitions, and parades to celebrate the custom of the festival to celebrate Mexican heritage and call for discrimination. In the 1980s, the Day of the Dead altar was erected for victims of the AIDS epidemic, thousands of people who disappeared during the Mexican drug war, and those who lost their lives in the 1985 Mexican earthquake. In 2019, mourners erected a giant altar near a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, with offerings on it, and a gunman targeting Latinos killed 22 people.
As Lomnitz explains, one reason more people are likely to attend the Día de Muertos celebration is that the festival addresses a reality that modern culture rarely acknowledges – our own death.
"It creates space for communication between the living and the dead. Where else do people have this? Lonitz said. These altars have become resources and connections with that world, which is part of their popularity and fascination. ”