Day of the dead/dia de los muertos

Check out day of the dead photos here.

This was my second time back in DF, the second biggest city in the world so they say. This time I stayed in the ritzy suburb of La Condesa which is the equivalent to Paddington (for those who know Sydney). Lots of café lates been sipped in over priced cafes/restaurants while BMW’s and Hummers are being driven around with taco stands still on many street corners (not so much like Paddington!). There’s some interesting places to go out to in these parts and I did take advantage of this, mainly with my friend Alex (my ex-flatmate from Sydney). In the second hostel I stayed at I encountered a guy in the dorm room I was staying in who sweared that he recognised me. I thought he was using this as a pick up line but it turns out that we met in Morelia 3 weeks ago with Jen, while we were eating quesadillas. He had tried to start a conversation with us and both Jen and I weren’t too responsive He remembered and said that we had ignored him, which is probably quite true. It’s funny how things come back and hit you in the face. On saying that he wasn’t the nicest person I’ve ever met and he definitely annoyed me a good deal for the 3 days that I stayed in the hostel, constantly complaining about everything and whinging copiously.

So after a week of staying in hostels, I decided to finally give the old hostel living a rest and go back to couch surfing. The first couple I stayed with had a loved one pass away and so had family engagements to attend to which meant that I had to leave. Kindly, the couple found me another couch surfer to stay with whom I got on with superbly, especially for the weekend of dia de los muertos (day of the dead) which we were both very obsessed about!

Days of the dead is celebrated profusely in Mexico and is when the souls of the dead come back to join their loved ones. It is celebrated officially on the 1st of November (dia de los inocentes) which is when the souls of the children are honoured and the 2nd of November (dia de los difuntos) when the souls of the adults are honoured. The two days are happy celebrations, joyful, colourful and full of life, with lots of food, sweets, drinks and humour in the air. The celebration dates back to the Aztecs, believing that death is a door to another existence and that on the days of the dead, the souls are reunited with the living. Calaveras (skulls or skeletons) are everywhere during this time, playfully acting out scenes from the living, from skeleton mariachis playing a tune, to skeletons enjoying a lavish dinner or dancing joyously together and wearing large grins on their faces with sombreros on their heads.

Our first stop with my CS David was the markets in DF where they sell absolutely everything you can think of including sugared or chocolate skulls which are colourfully decorated and given out to friends and family with their names written on them, Halloween costumes line the stalls, skeleton toys hang waiting for their chords to be pulled by kids, paper decorations of all colours picturing skeletons in various scenes are in abundance used to adorn home altars and offerings, zombie dolls, and there was even a witchcraft/voodoo section. It was the 31st of October, the day before the first official day of the dead and therefore the markets were jam-packed full of people buying their last minute day of the dead presents and decorations. The air was festive with little kids dressed up for Halloween and asking for trick or treats to passers by.

That night I went to a Halloween party with Mariana and her boyfriend. I dressed up as a witch (a last minute put together!) and Mariana’s mum, who’s starting out as a makeup artist did my makeup (luckily enough as I don’t think I would have looked much like a witch otherwise!). The party was chock-full to the brim but after some pushing, we managed to get in and see the efforts that everyone had put into their costumes. I’ve never been to a Halloween party where EVERYONE was dressed up and had really put lots of thought into their particular characters. I saw pirates, draculas, clowns, zombies, skeletons, devils, wrestlers, the scream, lord of the ring characters, genies, the works! And very typically Mexican, mariachis appeared at midnight and played for an hour to the weird and wonderful characters floating around the night.

The next day David and his other couch surfer (also David) and I went to Xochimilco, one of the remaining indigenous areas of DF and also where there’s canals, called the Venice of Mexico. Here they had offering after offering bordering the footpaths with traditional day of the dead bread (sweet bread which is prepared especially for the day of the dead as the belief is that the dead love sugar), candles, sugar skulls, brightly cut decorative paper, food (favourite of the dead), tequila, cigarettes, decorations, poems, photos and much more depending on the offering. Each offering can be either for one person who died, a group of people, a tragedy that occurred or an issue that is going on in the community. Poems called calaveras are written about people who are alive in a humorous manner, normally making references to a quality or a defect of the person. Kids write these about their friends as a part of day of the dead on the 2nd November and there are many calaveras also written about politicians and other well known personalities. The market in Xochimilco was full of day the dead flowers mainly Zempasuchitl flowers (marigold flowers), which are either yellow or orange and are used to line the floors to help the dead find their way and decorate the offerings.

We caught a collectivo trajineras (a typical boat that goes on the canals of Xochimilco) and gently moved along the picturesque canals along with the many other trajineras. Trajinera merchants are also floating about, selling anything from beer, corn on the cob, chips, clothes, toys, rugs and there was even a photographer who looked like he was on a safari holiday waiting for clients. There were mariachis (of course!) who would hook up their trajineras with the requesting trajinera and would play in the middle of the canal. I was surprised by the amount of Mexicans that were on the canals and the lack of foreigners around. David told me that it’s a common thing to hire a trajinera with a group of your friends, to celebrate a special occasion.

As night fell over Xochimilco, we decided to take a look at the local cemetery (cemeteries are only open at night during day of the dead celebrations) and watch the vigils that were taking place. Unfortunately as soon as we arrived, it started to rain fiercely upon us and so we hurried from grave to grave trying to see as much as we could in between wet blinks. After 10 minutes of this, we gave up and, completely saturated, made our way to the metro. In the metro we were the only two who were wet. Other passengers looked on curiously, probably wondering why we had persisted to walk in such a heavy down pour.

The next day we continued our day of the dead offering obsession by going to Coyoacan, a part of Mexico city which has a rich culture to it and has many intellectuals and artists living there. Our first stop was the cemetery where we spent a good hour winding our way through the narrow paths, viewing tombstones and the decorations that loved ones had placed on them. Many families were already there at 11 in the morning, cleaning, decorating, praying, talking to their loved ones, singing along with the Mariachis that some of them had hired, laying down flowers, having a picnic, drinking (vodka for example!) and sitting on the tombs having a chat. It was the most social cemetery I had ever been to and seemed like a fantastic way to interact with the idea of death and dead loved ones. Kids were of course also there, helping and taking part in the rituals, laying down flowers on the graves with some of them dressed up in their Halloween costumes continuing to ask for trick or treats.

Next stop for the day was the centre of Coyoacan which had more formal offerings than what I had seen so far. These were prepared by the council and many of the offerings were to artists that had passed away from the area. I was most impressed with the large pictures that had been designed with a mixture of petals and seeds. In another area, some offerings were set up which explained the different elements that are placed on the offerings. They described that water is placed so that the dead are never thirsty, food because it’s the belief that the dead still live on and come down to eat on these days, day of the dead bread with little strips that symbolise bones, candles are there to lead the dead towards the divine light and flowers symbolise the sun which shine on the lives of the souls.

In the afternoon we went to the University City again (went on Saturday night but couldn’t really see much and it was too cold for my liking!) where we saw the amazing offerings that the university had set up. Every year they have a theme which each department adheres to and this year it was a tribute to Edgar Allan Poe, the famous America writer who is considered to be the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. Amazing structures were erected of giant skeletons, spiders, bloody hands coming out of the ground, skulls in all corners, decapitated heads sprawled on the ground, swords stuck through bloody hearts and scenes of skeletons being killed. All very gory but surprisingly quite appealing to look at. Kids were going around with their parents and all had smiles, seeming content and not at all scared by what they saw. I started to think about how death is treated in Australia and the differences with Mexico. We seem to cover up and not talk about death, as if it’s a taboo subject. Here, it’s out in the open, gory, jokingly uncanny, cheeky and joyful. Kids are confronted with death from a very early age and are accustomed to it. Death is celebrated rather than just simply feared as it seems to be in my country. I think I might start to adopt this tradition and also call it my own...!