Email this page  Print this page  del.icio.us  digg  yahoo!  Comments

El Dia de los Muertos: Cultural legacy and human celebration

Death shows its personal and public faces
in Day of the Dead events

(page 1 of 3)

I arrived at Arizona State University in the not too welcoming temperatures of August 2005 to join what was then the Department of Chicana/o Studies as its new director.

Almost immediately I was invited to attend my first Arizona Día del los Muertos exhibit at ASU’s Museum of Anthropology. 

Frankly, I had not had much contact with Día del los Muertos in a public sphere. As a kid in Tucson I remembered the visits to the camposanto to lay fresh flowers and other things on my relatives’ gravesites. On Nov. 1 of every year my family would dress up, attend mass at Santa Cruz or St. John’s Catholic churches, and then after Mass buy some pan de huevo at Ronquillo’s panadería and go to the mostly Mexican side of the cemetery.

There were no calaveras to speak of except those already interred, no grinning sugar skulls, and no incense except that which had been sent to the heavens during the Mass we had just left. We placed some votive candles – perhaps even a glass of water and a pan dulce – on the gravesite, prayed for our relatives, and then drove to eat fried chicken at Once-a-Meal drive-in restaurant on 4^th Avenue in Tucson. 

Therefore, when I first entered the museum I was surprised at the seriousness of the artists and artwork, and intensity of the attendees emotions. There were elaborate altars with ofrendas and marigolds, papel picado, and calaveras de azúcar.

People walked around dressed in Mesoamerican traditional dress. They had performed ancient ceremonial danzas and prior to my arrival had blown incense to the four cardinal points, just as the Aztecs had a millennium before. All this was complemented by an all-woman mariachi band, which is a relatively modern tradition from Jalisco, Mexico. It all seemed very Mexican, or so I thought. 

Yet, as I moved through this rich imagery and symbolism, I could not quite get my own personal experience out of my head. What I was seeing fit but didn’t fit. I felt uneasy, as if I wasn’t quite “getting it.”

I have written a book about the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, and was raised in Tucson, one of the oldest Spanish outposts in what is now the United States. Yet I had never seen Día del los Muertos as it was expressed at ASU that day.

Like many Latinos, I was compelled to reconcile my personal practices of honoring ancestors and contemplating the cycle of life, death and re-birth with the public practice of the Day of the Dead.

It is an inner and educational journey we all must take as we visit the various public art exhibitions and fiestas this Day of the Dead season.

The public Día de los Muertos

The Día del los Muertos tradition in Arizona is touched by ancient practices in some parts of Mexico. For the most part, the ancient versions of the Day of the Dead were practiced by indigenous groups, mostly in central and southern Mexico. 

 It is also a rendition of European rituals and Catholic beliefs. How much of Día del los Muertos is European and how much is indigenous is subject to debate. But after 500 years, even scholars would be hard-pressed to decipher many of the origins of the rituals. 

Even the practice of displaying skulls in both private and public venues may be Mesoamerican and European in origin, since both traditions displayed them prominently during the Day of the Dead season.

Yet both the public and private practice of Día del los Muertos is essentially a Catholic one in which the Mass, communion, the naming of the dead, and blessings are all part of the liturgy.  

Like many other traditions, commercialism has influenced the elaborateness and intensity of these practices all over Mexico, and as we’ll see, even here in the U.S.

In fact, Día del los Muertos has become a tourist attraction in Mexico and in the U.S. Southwest. The marketplace square in most Mexican towns becomes filled to the brim with vendors selling every imaginable artifact associated with Day of the Dead, or even remotely related, such as Halloween masks.

And you are sure to be lured by art, crafts and jewelry created mostly by Chicanos at the various Day of the Dead events and festivals throughout Arizona.