You know how people always talk about The True Meaning of Christmas? Evidently you can get the wrong answer on that one.... But the meaning of the Day of the Dead? I'm not sure it's possible to be wrong about the meaning of this beautiful, ancient, modern, strange, and familiar tradition.
On Tuesday, a desfile of the dead battered their way through the streets.
On Wednesday, we went with Tom and Jo to the main plaza to see an exhibition of altares.
Then we went to kids's school. The kids presented a wonderful play in which all of the main characters of the Mexican tradition were welcomed to the fiesta for the dead and the living. (Oscar was one of the cadejos, the devil's dog. When he and the rest of his pack dropped to their hands and knees and raced toward the other fiesta-goers, the little kids screamed very gratifyingly.) The older kids read legends while a smoke machine chugged plumes of smoke from behind their chair. (For this, Lore was a nurse in a legend I didn't quite follow; Wilhelmina was La Quemada, a woman who disfigures herself -- throws coals from the tortilla maker onto her face - -in order to test a suitor's love.)
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| Behind this little vampire in the audience, Las Catrinas made their onstage entrance. |
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| El Catrín. |
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| El Choko, a shepherd boy who runs along the mountain tops and lures people into following him, eventually tricking them into running off cliffs! |
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| La Llorona x3. |
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| Los sombrerones. |
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| Las Calacas. |
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| Los cadejos. |
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| Las Nahualas (beautiful women, they can shift shapes and here are shown in jaguar form) |
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| (Another ?) |
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| Los duendes (mischievous elves to watch out for). |
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| La Quebrantahuesos, a woman who was unfaithful and was cursed (her skin got really bad, among other consequences). |
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| All the dead have arrived at the fiesta. |
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| Paola reading the legend of La Quemada. |
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| Lore comforts the HIDEOUS La Quemada while a familiar cadejo looks on. |
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| This is the founder and principal of the school, the loving, lovely, and chaos-loving Eloina. |
The next day, Thursday, we went to Doña Lesvia's house for a small service in her house. Everyone is still so heartbroken about Rodolfo de Jesus's death 7 months ago; there were a lot of tears. We all cried too--for Rodolfo de Jesus, for Grandpa Dave who died in October, for my parents...we miss them.
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| The altar of the Zuñiga-Aguilar family. |
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| Singing and crying. |
After the service, we had a feast and laughed a lot at the jokes we were able to comprehend.
On Friday morning, we went to the cemetery. (There are a LOT of photos below, and not all of them are great (because I took most of them, not Sean, and because I used my phone), but it's hard to put aside even one. After all, graves are people, too! And I loved the beautiful profusion of the cemetery that day.)
It has been wonderful to feel the dead so close to us this week.
Finally, look at these angelitos with their home-made masks.
They always seem to go all out when they celebrate. While we take a couple of hours in the evening to trick-or-treat, they take a whole week!
ReplyDeleteI love it. It's like we always tell the kids, "The more you put into it, the more you get out of it."
DeleteI think we'd all live a lot better if we spent more time thinking about death. Last night I heard this interesting interview with the woman behind "Ask a Mortician":
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cbc.ca/q/news-feature/2012/11/05/ask-a-mortician/
You can see her on YouTube. Of course, I'm guessing they have less need of learning about death via YouTube in many parts of the world, including Chiapas.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTCg6PGaOkM
I agree! Thanks for the link; I'll check out the interview.
DeleteSo Keir: I included a photo of one crypt that we decided would be perfect for you and Marya. Can you tell which one it is?
I also love the profusion in all of these photos and in the descriptions of your experience of el Dia de los Muertos. I thought a lot about you guys over the past couple of weeks as we celebrated the day of the dead at Emerson. Maria Estrada and crew were able to pull off quite a celebration, with donated food from Ricos, but I did miss Mina painting Catrina faces. Anyway, it did you guys proud :)
ReplyDeleteWe had heard the event was a big success; that's wonderful. It's getting to be a terrific school tradition!
DeleteWhat an experience to be in Mexico for the Day of the Dead festival. I loved all the altars and graves, each one different and so lovingly prepared. The photographs on some of them made them so personal. I'm glad you all and Tom and Jo were able to mourn your losses along with the Chiapans during this speial time.
ReplyDelete