MISTYCAL, MESMERIZING, MAGICAL
These are just a few adjectives that better describe “Dia de los Muertos” This tradition has its origins in the ancient, pre-Hispanic world. The Aztecs have their own philosophy about death, and after the Conquistadores arrived to America, the fusion between this philosophy and Christian religion was completed. Since then, this Mexican tradition has been celebrated for centuries in Mexico and nowadays is more prominent in the inner states. Mexico City, unfortunately has been adopting Halloween, a lovely celebration without a doubt but it is not ours. In recent years, famous people in Mexico, from the TV and movies industry had been pushing this tradition more and more to cherish it and share it with our younger generations.
Taxco is one of those Magical towns that celebrates “Dia de los Muertos” with a grand festivity, full of color, music, dance and much more.
On November 2nd people goes to the cemeteries to visit their love ones, all you can see and smell is the “zempultlzchil” flower. In the indigenous dialect Nahuatl, zempul means dead and tzchitl means flower. This flower is well known in the USA as Marigold.
Every family builds an altar to offer to their decease love ones. The altar always has to include all that food and items that were their favorites when alive. The altar always shows as well the photos of the people they are waiting to come one more time and share with them their favorite food, music, candy or anything else you can think of. This is a lovely and emotive way to remember and share a kind of spiritual experience with them.
On Taxco’s narrow stone paved streets, you can see the constant traffic of people dressed and painted as skeletons. Women and men imitate the “Catrina and Catrin” look with colorful clothing and very artistic make up. You might be wondering what is a Catrina or Catrin? These are the names for female and male characters that were named this way for being snob members of high society in the 1900s around the Mexican revolution era. This was the name given to the high society families of that time when the differences of social status was really evident.
Nowadays Catrinas are dressed not only in fancy clothes from that era, but they are also depicted with a more ethnic and colorful Mexican folklore clothing. That goes as well for the male characters.
We cannot finish this article without mentioning food…. Well, there’s plenty of delicious food to lick your fingers. We have the “Calaveritas” sugar skulls that can carry your name or any other names, from family members or friends on their foreheads. They are beautifully decorated and the best of all, you can eat them after the celebrations are over. We have buñuelos, atole, pambazos, pan de muerto and mole. this is an ancient Mexican dish that can’t be absent on any important celebration in Mexico. But we will be talking about Mexican dishes in another article.
Thank you very much for your interest on our culture and please, take a minute to check our Taxco silver jewelry collection for Dia de los Muertos above. You are going to love it.
