Panteón, Noche de Muertos (Cemetery, Night of the Dead)in Michoacán. Photo, 2006, by Ken Kuster, Morelia.
Several weeks ago Francisco (a friend from Michoacán) and I were
talking about differences in cultural attitudes among citizens of
Canada, the United States, and Mexico. We ended by discussing the Noche de Muertos (Night of the Dead) customs here in Mexico.
Francisco told me that before the Spanish conquerors, Mesoamerican
natives considered death to just be a simple step toward a new life.
Life was a circle: time before birth, time here on earth, time after
death constituted a continuum with no end, like a golden ring on a
finger. Communication between the spirit life of the living and the
dead was an ordinary experience.
With the arrival of the Spanish and their Christian beliefs, the
indigenous people were taught new ideas. Thoughts of death produced
terror: in the final judgment, the just would receive their reward and
sinners their punishment. The difficulty lay in not being counted among
the sinners.
The original pre-Hispanic remembrance celebration of the dead took place during the Aztec calendar month dedicated to Mictecacihuatl,
the goddess of the dead. That month of the Aztec calendar corresponds
to present-day July and the beginning of August. Post-conquest Spanish
priests moved the celebration to coincide with the eve of All Souls
Day, which falls on November 2. It was a useless attempt to change what
the Spaniards regarded as a profane New World festivity of mumbo-jumbo
into a Christian solemn occasion. The modern day result is a festival
characterized by a mix of Aztec and Catholic ritual—a purely Mexican
event.
In the late 1800’s, José Guadalupe Posada popularized the notion of death partying through life.
Today in Mexico, death is played with, made fun of, and partied with.
We throw our arms around it in a wickedly sardonic embrace and escape
its return embrace with a side-step, a wink, and a joke.
Noche de Muertos (Night of the Dead) is celebrated during the
chilly night of November 1, ending in the misty dawn hours of November
2. For Mexicans, the celebration represents something more than maudlin
veneration of their dead relatives. The celebrations of Memorial Day in
the United States or Remembrance Day in Canada are all too frequently
devoted to a fleeting moment’s thought of those who have gone before,
with the rest of the day passed in picnicking and the anticipation of
the soon-to-arrive summer holidays. In many parts of Mexico, the living
spend the entire night in communion with the faithful departed, telling
stories, swapping jokes, wiping away a tear or two.
The idea that death is found in the midst of life (and life in the
midst of death) has given rise to different manifestations of
extraordinary and original expressions of popular art in Mexico. Among
those are the custom of making and decorating sugar skulls (often with
the name of a friend or relative written across the forehead), pan de muertos (bread of the dead), drawings in which much fun is poked at death, and calaveras,
verses in which living and dead personalities—usually celebrities in
the arts, sciences and especially in politics—are skewered by their own
most glaring traits and defects. We wait impatiently for the newspapers
to give us the most hilarious of the annual poems.
Traditionally, ofrendas (personalized altars) are prepared
in the home in honor of one or more deceased family members. The altar
is prepared with the deceased person’s favorite foods, photographs, and
symbolic flowers. Traditions vary from community to community.
In Michoacán, the altar may be decorated with special breads and
bananas. In Oaxaca, other foods and fruits are used. It’s most common to decorate an altar with hot pink and deep purple papel picado (cut tissue paper) as well as with foods, flowers, and personal objects important to the deceased.
In many places, public ofrendas are set up in the town
square, the local Casa de la Cultura, or in shops. Many public altars honor
national heroes, personalities from the arts, and little-known friends
or well-known public figures.
We use bottles of beer or tequila or another of the dead
person’s favorite drinks, a packet of cigarettes or a cigar, a prayer
card featuring the deceased’s name-saint and another of the apparition
of the Virgin to whom the deceased was particularly devoted.
Foods on the altar can include a dish filled with mole poblano or other festive food that the deceased enjoyed in life, a pot of frijoles de la olla (freshly cooked beans), platters of tamales, pan dulce
(sweet bread), and piles of newly harvested corn, pears, oranges,
limes, and any other bounty from the family’s fields or garden. The
purpose of the offerings is not to flatter and honor to the dead, but
rather to share the joy and power of the year’s abundance with him or
her.
Dolls made of cartón (cardboard) are usually sold at special markets specifically devoted to Day of the Dead items. The cempasúchil (gold flowers) and the cordón del obispo (bishop’s belt, the magenta flowers) adorn most graves and ofrendas (altars honoring the deceased).
The fresh flower most commonly used everywhere in Mexico to decorate both home altars and at the cemetery is the cempasúchil, a type of marigold. According to my friend Francisco, the cempasúchil represents reverence for the dead. Wild mountain orchids, in abundant bloom at this time of year and cut especially for the Noche de Muertos,
signify reverence toward God. Dahlias, the floral symbol of Mexico, are
also used profusely on both home altars and in cemeteries. In addition,
huge standing coronas (wreaths) of colorful ribbons and
artificial flowers adorned with lithographs of saints, various
manifestations of the Virgin Mary, or Jesus are used more and more
frequently in Mexican cemeteries.
Because the social atmosphere of this celebration is so warm and so
colorful—and due to the abundance of food, drink, and good company—the
commemoration of Noche de Muertos
is much loved by the majority of those who observe it. In spite of the
openly fatalistic attitude exhibited by all participants, the
celebration is filled with life and is a social ritual of the highest
importance. Recognition of the cycle of life and death reminds everyone
of his or her mortality.
Catrines, in this case clay figures of well-dressed skeletons, represent the vanity of life and the inescapable reality of death.
On the day of November 1 (and frequently for several days
before) families all over Mexico go to the cemetery to clean and
decorate the graves of their loved ones. With brooms, shears, hoes,
buckets, metal scrapers and paint, the living set to work to do what
needs to be done to leave the grave site spotless.
Is the iron fence around the plot rusty? Scrape it and paint it till it
looks brand new. Are there overgrown weeds or bushes? Chop them out,
cut them back. Have dead leaves and grass collected at the headstone?
Now is the time to sweep them all out. There is usually much lamenting
that the grave site has been allowed to deteriorate so much throughout
the year—this year we won’t let that happen again, will we?
Sugar skulls are a Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) tradition in
Mexico. Buy one and have the name of your friend written on the
forehead with stiff sugary icing. Your friend will be delighted with
the gift.
In many places, November 1 is celebrated as the Day of the Little
Angels—the little children who have died. In Michoacán on the Day of
the Little Angels, the baptismal godparents are responsible for
bringing a wooden frame for the flowers, for bringing the cempasúchil
and the wild orchids. The godparents bring sugar angels or animals
similar to the sugar skulls. They may also bring new clothing for the
dead child, and a new toy or two. At the parents’ home, preparation of
food and drink is underway so that family and friends may be served. Cohetes (booming sky rockets) announce that the procession, singing and praying, is proceeding to the cemetery.
In the late evening of November 1, girls and women arrive at the graves
of adults with baskets and bundles and huge clay casseroles filled with
the favorite foods of the deceased. A bottle or two of brandy or
tequila shows up under someone’s arm. Someone else brings a radio and
wires it up to play.
Watch a bit of the tradition: Day of the Dead in Mexico
A tiny sugar skeleton band, made in Michoacán for the Noche de Muertos.
In another part of the cemetery, a band appears to help make the
moments spent in the cemetery more joyful and to play the dead
relatives’ favorite songs. Sometimes families and friends adjourn to a
nearby home to continue the party. There’s even a celebrated dicho (saying) that addresses the need for this fiesta: "El muerto al cajón y el vivo al fiestón." (The dead to the coffin and the living to the big blowout.")
The lake is made of flower petals! Photo by Ken Kuster, Morelia.
Although the traditional observance of Noche de Muertos
calls for a banquet either at the cemetery or at home during the
pre-dawn hours of November 2, urban families in Mexico may simply
observe the Day of the Dead rather than spend the night in the
cemetery.
Their observance is frequently limited to a special family dinner which includes pan de muertos
(bread of the dead). In some areas of the country, it’s considered good
luck to be the person who bites down on the toy plastic skeleton hidden
by the bakery in each round loaf.
Friends and members of the family give one another little gifts
which can include tiny clay skeletons dressed in clothing or set in
scenes which represent the occupations or personality characteristics
of the receiver. The gift that’s most appreciated is a calavera
(sugar skull), decorated with sugar flowers, sparkling sequins, and the
name of the recipient written in frosting across the cranium.
The pre-Hispanic concept of death as an energy link, as a germ
of life, may very well explain how the skull came to be a symbol of
death. That symbol has been recreated and assimilated in all aspects of
Mexican life. The word calavera
can also refer to a person whose existence is dedicated to
pleasure—someone who does not take life seriously. The mocking poems of
this season, the caricatures drawn with piercingly funny accuracy, the
sugar skulls joyfully eaten by the person whose name they carry: all of
these are an echo of pre-Hispanic thought, inherited by Mexico today.
From Guanajato: skeletal figures made of cartón (cardboard).
This tradition which recognizes that death is a part of the circle of
life brings ease and rest to the living. Hearts heal, souls reaffirm
their connections. Though beyond our view, the dead are never beyond
our memories. On the night of November 1, the living remember the dead and the dead remember the taste of home.
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