Days of the Dead - Nov. 1st

(Karl's writing)
Every year when I talk about Day of the Dead in class, I always lament that I have never seen the rich tradition in person. While on my mission, I had no knowlege of Day of the Dead commemorations and so the days came and went without noticing. Since learning about it myself, I have always wanted to experience it in person. This was our opportunity, and I wanted to do as much as we could, see and experience as much as we could. Of course, the best would have been to travel to the areas best known for the celebration, like Patzcuaro or a town in the state of Mexico where the tradition is supposed to have started. Instead, we tried to find the best of what was around us.

As previously stated, on Oct. 31 we went downtown to see the ofrendas in the town center with the family members of my colleague's late husband. At a taco shop for dinner, we raised a toast to Gustavo's memory and thought he would enjoy the circle of circumstances that brought us together for this, of all celebrations. We returned in time for the cross-cultural tradition known as "trick-or-treating" in our own little neighborhood, thus precluding any disappointment on the part of our children.

On Sunday, November 1st, we put the kids to bed and decided to go check out the scene at the local cemetary. Notice the quantity of cempasuchil (marigold) flowers for sale, the Aztec flower of the dead. Unfortunately, we found the graveyard closed, not the festive nocturnal scene I had hoped to find. Apparently, the tradition of staying the night in the graveyard is only practiced in those cultural focal points mentioned, like Patzcuaro.

Not wanting to miss out, I persuaded Krista to trapse outside the city in search of a town called Huaquechula. A teacher colleague told me this town has the most elaborate customs for Day of the Dead in the area. It was said that they maintain a community vigil in the cemetary all night long, so the goal was to find the town and share the spectacle. Leaving around 10:00 pm, we followed the map until the pavement ended in sugar cane fields. This was about 11:30 pm. We asked a local resident if he knew how to get to the town, and he gave us two options for arriving there, one to return to the highway and go back a ways, but the shorter way was to follow the dirt roads in a rather complicated route. He mentioned that if his brother were there with a pick up truck, he would take us to the town. I thought that if he had the time but not the truck, perhaps he would accompany us and we would return him home. So I asked, and he accepted! Here we embarked on a most unusual adventure, driving on dirt roads through towering sugar cane, seeing occasional owls and foxes scurrying in the headlights, passing midnight on a wet, slick dirt road with a stranger we picked up in the middle of the night in search of a graveyard. Perfect!

Unfortunately, after so much effort to find the cemetary in this town, we found it abandoned. Whoever meticulously decorated the graves during the day had returned to sleep at an hour more conducive for mortals. Two tombs still had candles burning in silent sentinel, one of which is captured in this picture. If you look carefully, the picture captures a spirit in the candle light. Whether it is coming or going, we cannot say:)

Note the centuries old colonial church within the cemetary. While not finding exactly what we were looking for, the sights were hardly disappointing!. . .

Nearly every house in the town had a trail of cempasuchil petals to guide the dead back home for the preparations made for them upon the altar.

We also heard and saw the "campaneros," boys in the belfry of a local church ringing the bells as a vigil of the dead for 24 hours straight. Unfortunately, the picture of them did not turn out.

Our friend and host allowed us to visit the altar in his home. Following which, I offered him a $50 peso bill for his time and trouble, but he adamently refused, saying that if nothing else, we should say we have been served.

Then he grabbed a tall candle and took us to this house down the street, the only one still lit this late at night, now past 1:00am. The tradition is that if you show up with a candle for the ofrenda in a given house, the family will invite you to eat with them even if you are a perfect stranger.

This is the family we spent a surreal moment with. The man on the left is our friend and guide to Huequechula. The woman in the middle lost her husband just ten months ago. Since this is his first Day of the Dead, the altar is especially grandiose. Friends of the deceased supplied the flowers and candles and the wooden cross, the second in a series of three: one when the person dies, one for the first Day of the Dead following the death, and one for the first anniversary of his death. The crosses are then taken to decorate the tomb. In fact, they brought out pan dulce and champurrado (hot chocolate) and invited us to stay for mole. We enjoyed the pan and champurrado, but, alas, it was a wee bit late for mole, now about 2:00 am, so we declined.

We traveled home grateful to have the Monday off of school to recuperate from arriving home at about 3:00 am. While we did not see everything that is Mexico's Day of the Dead, what we saw was truly unique, extraordinary, and most memorable.