Photo by Geoff Carter
By Geoff Carter
We visited the beautiful resort town of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, not so long ago. Our trip happened to coincide with Dia de Los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. This holiday, celebrated on the evening of November 1st and the day of the 2nd,, is an offshoot of (but only distantly related to) Catholic All-Saints’ Day. While Los Muertos occurs about the same time as the American Halloween, it has little in commn with the American holiday. Witches, werewolves, zombies, chainsaw-wielding maniacs, or other horrors don’t run rampant—as they do in the States. Instead, it is a time of festivity and remembrance, when families welcome back their dead relatives who return at this time to visit their dear ones once again.
Mexico is a vast and beautiful country whose indigenous population was heavily influenced by the Catholic Church. Hernando Cortes and the other conquistadores who invaded in the sixteenth century came with the mission to not only steal gold, but also to convert the native population to Catholicism. They felt obligated, in the name of God, to use any means to do so, including subjugating, enslaving, and even killing the indigenous populations.
The ancient Aztec civilization, incredibly advanced in the sciences of astronomy, architecture, and agriculture, believed strongly that the underworld, their land of the dead, was ruled by the goddess Mictecacihuatl, a stern and forbidding female entity. To appease her, the Aztecs buried their dead with precious objects and food, and so once a year, she would allow the dead to return to their families. In an effort to extinguish these “pagan” beliefs and shown them the right way, the Catholics sought to move the festival celebrating Mictecacihuatl from the summer to November 1st, hoping that switching the time frame l to All-Saints Day would instill the values of the Catholic Church into their hearts and minds of the native peoples. It didn’t exactly take.
Despite the efforts of the church, Aztec indigenous beliefs about the underworld persisted. La Catrina, the ofrenda, and the altares are still strong elements of Mexican culture. La Catrina, a figure popularized in the early twentieth century by Diego Rivera, among others, is now the iconic skeletal figure associated most closely with Los Muertos, is a living (pardon the pun) piece of Mexican history. As La Catrina is a bare bones representation of a person, she is widely seen as a universal figure representing human mortality—a graphic reminder we will end all up in the same place.
You see Las Catrinas everywhere in present-day Mexico at this time, dressed in everything from work clothes to their Sunday best to full wedding regalia. In one of the best examples of the blending of these cultures, a row of Las Catrinas dressed as Catholic saints seem to be marching somewhat ominously along the Malecon in Puerto Vallarta.
During our visit to Puerto Vallarta, the festival began days before the actual holiday with the construction of ofrendas, shrines offering food and gifts to the departed. Usually adorned with photos of the deceased, ofrendas also contain the departed’s favorite foods and drinks and traditional fare like Pan del Muerto, a sort of sweetbread topped with bone-shaped dough and sprinkled with sugar. Skulls made of sugar are also typically placed on the ofrendas.
Perhaps a bottle or two of Pacifico, a bottle of tequila, or a plate of tamales might be left for the adult departed. One ofrenda we saw, dedicated to a young child, contained a poster for the film Frozen, some dolls and toys, as well as some of the deceased child’s favorite soft drinks. It was also beautifully adorned with flowers, particularly the fragrant yellow cempasúchil—or marigold, whose odor is said to awaken the dead and then guide them to the panteon, or graveyard, to be reunited with their loved ones. The cempasuchil are everywhere at this time, adorning doorways, shops, ofrendas, homes, and restaurants.
As we walked down the Malecon, the main beachfront thoroughfare of Vallarta, we saw dozens of ofrendas constructed by businesses or families and placed along the outside walls of the municipal building. One was dedicated to a guarderia, the Mexican equivalent of a day-care owner, by her family. Another was dedicated to a patriarch of a grocery business. Yet another celebrated the lives of homeless dogs (a chronic problem in Puerto Vallarta), who had since passed away. Bowls of dog biscuits and toys awaited the return of these departed family members.
Dozens of catrinas, or sculptures of skeletons, representations of the returning dead, decorated the Malecon in every imaginable state of dress or undress. One was made up as as a mermaid, another as a beachgoer covered in sand, and yet another group of catrins as a band of musicians. The representations were as varied as the lives of any of the people who had lovingly built them. They were, and are a celebration of the lives of the people who would be returning to their families on the evening of November 1st..
The festival culminated with a parade from the Panteon 5th de Diciembre, a large and well-populated graveyard in the Colonia of 5th de Diciembre. Because we didn’t want to disturb celebrating their reunions with loved ones, we did not want to go there on the night of the dead, so we visited this particular panteon another morning.
It is a big cemetery, crowded and full of history. Parts of it are very old. Some monuments are cracked and broken, their inscriptions nearly erased by vagaries of time and weather. We saw a half-buried cross with an illegible inscription. What forgotten soul lay there? Other stones are meticulously maintained marble monuments. Some are even enclosed in glass frames. Other crypts include the names of entire generations of a single family.
Standing in the middle of the panteon, one is presented with a magnificent view of the mountains, sometimes shrouded in fog. It is a beautifully diverse graveyard, containing all the strata of local society. The poor, the rich, the obscure, the famous, the good and the evil all share this ground.
These souls are marked with all styles and varieties of memorials, stones, crosses, mausoleums, and simple crosses, but all are now part of a single homogenous community. They are not rich, famous, or acclaimed. They are dead and the same, like La Catrina. And while they are mourned and missed, they are still loved and appreciated.
When we visited this cemetery, a few days before the El Dia del Muertos, some of the gravesites were already partially decorated. People with loved ones there will finish building shrines to their departed dear ones, and then on the evening of November 1st, they will go to spend the night with them. According to some of my Mexican friends, the night is filled with feasting, drinking, music, and fun. The dead do not return as zombies or ghosts to frighten the living (or eat their brains). They come back to be reunited with those who love and remember them.
It is a holiday of remembrance and joy. In this culture, this mash-up of Catholicism and ancient Aztec beliefs, the dead do not seem to be truly dead, but instead live on in the memories of those they left behind. On the evening on November 1st, their return to their loved ones is in actuality, a celebration of life. Loss is felt but not dwelt on. Grief and mourning are put on the shelf for a short time. Unlike Halloween in American culture, death is not something to fear or dread. Instead, it is regarded as part of the natural order. As long as one is remembered, they are never truly gone.
On some Día de Los Muertos in the future, I would like to go to build ofrendas for my brother and my father, share a Pabst Blue Ribbon or tow, some chips, and a couple stories with them. Tell them what’s new. Show them pictures of my wife and daughter. It’s the least that I—that any of us—can do.
Notes
- https://theconversation.com/day-of-the-dead-from-aztec-goddess-worship-to-modern-mexican-celebration-124962
- https://www.npr.org/2021/10/30/1050726374/why-marigolds-or-cempasuchil-are-the-iconic-flower-of-dia-de-los-muertos
- https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation/2019/10/la-catrina-dark-history-day-deads-immortal-icon