Today, for the Mexicans, our house is filled with joy, warm colors, and tender love for the departed.
We listen to melancholic traditional music with hints of cheer, we eat delicious “pan de muerto”, recite prose about dead to cheer up and cry laughing.
Today the spirits of our loved ones come back home guided by paths of the Mexican marigolds, purified by salt, to eat their favorite dishes and drink their favorite drinks in the offerings where their pictures lay, water and copal purify their souls, candies, flowers and even toys for the kids as well as other remembrance of them to let them know we remember.
And of course this is not how the Native American of our land celebrated it, it’s a syncretism, when the Spanish brought Catholicism they changed some of the elements to deal with the land’s paganism introducing their own elements, like pictures of saints and crosses and getting rid of many others as well as changing the day (corn harvest) to when something similar was celebrated by their own tradition “the day of all saints”
After the Mexican revolution (the separation of state and church, the freedom of belief) the indigenous incorporated new elements.
Evangelization resources, the traditions of the Colonials that had been implemented during three centuries and oppressed the traditions from the indigenous were now out of place, people wee free to practice and and no religion, traits that were before forbidden were incorporated and turned it into the nationalist celebration it is today.
Elements like the “pan de muerto”(that used to be blood of sacrifices with amaranth before the Spanish came), the sugar skulls (that used to be enemy skulls displayed as a trophy called tzompantli) and “papel picado” were now part of the offer.
The Mayans believed in a life after death, therefore life never ended.
It was believed that the souls of our loved ones would go to Mictlan, which was created by the gods and reigned by Mictecancihuatl, lady of the death, goddess, (now represented by “la Catrina”) to give souls eternal rest.
It is not a mockery of death, but a celebration of it, after all, life cannot exist without death.
And it’s itself a celebration of life.
💀Feliz dia de muertos 💀
