The Days of the Dead (Dia de los muertos), November 1 & 2, are again creeping upon beautiful downtown Catemaco, Veracruz. And as usual, local newspapers lament the conditions of their community graveyards.
The Day of the Dead is a unique Mexican holiday combining aspects of Halloween (All Saints Day) and Thanksgiving. Its origins may be in observations of the Aztec “Lady of the the Dead (Miccailhuitontli), or simply a celebration of when everyone knows the weather seasons change in Mexico.
The holiday, (two of them, neither one is legal), is particularly popular in Southern Mexico, and provides countless tourists with photos in Oaxaca.
Broadly, the holiday consist of families welcoming their dead back into their homes with small altars decorated with photos of the dead and religious bricabrac, visiting and decorating the graves of their close kin, and having a smorgasbord for living family members related to or acquainted with the dead ones.
Dozens of flower sellers usually clutter the streets leading to a cemetery, and their flowers and the above ground sepulchres popular in Mexico, create some great photo opportunities.
Bakeries go ballistic on this holiday and create various shapes of breads for the living, including “Pan de Muerto”, bread stuffed with representative figures of the dead, “El Muñeco”, bread shaped like a corpse, and “La Cara”, a confection topped with fruits. All of these breads are outrageously delicious and contribute to the obesity epidemic in Mexico and among resident gringos.
After the holidays, the graveyards are usually ill maintained, mosquito infested junk yards, devoid of most respect for neither the dead nor the living.
