The Day of the Dead (in Spanish Día de los muertos or Día de muertos) is a Mexican celebration relating to the remembrance of the dead; of pre-Columbian origin, it takes place in the first days of November, in conjunction with the Catholic celebration of the dead. The festival is celebrated with brightly colored traditional music, drinks and food, combined with numerous caricatured representations of death. There are similar celebrations on the South American continent, such as the day of souls in Brazil, although in this case they are not pre-Columbian traditions.
The celebration, which is generally held between 28 October and 2 November, commemorates the deceased by type of death and age: for example, on 28 October some communities celebrate the dead by accident and suicide, with flowers and candles placed on the site. where death took place. On October 31 it is customary to pay homage to children, whose soul is believed to ascend directly to heaven; the first two days of November are dedicated to the others who have disappeared.
History[]
This festival carries on an ancient tradition thanks to the syncretism between the ancient pre-Hispanic culture and Catholicism. The cult of the dead was very important for the pre-Hispanic peoples. The human sacrifices that were consumed had the purpose of maintaining the balance between life and death because the blood fertilizes the earth making it fertile for new life. Life and death intertwined and were one.
For the ancient Mesoamericans, death did not have the moral connotations of the Catholic religion, in which the ideas of hell and heaven serve to punish or reward. On the contrary, they believed that the routes to the souls of the dead were determined by the type of passing and not caused by their behavior in life.
The directions the dead might take are:
The Tlalocan or paradise of Tlaloc, god of rain. Those who died in circumstances related to water went to this place: by drowning, those who died from diseases such as edema, scabies or pustules, as well as children sacrificed to the god. Tlalocan was a place of rest and abundance. Although the dead were generally cremated, those predestined in Tláloc were buried, like seeds, to germinate.
Omeyocan, paradise of the sun, presided over by Huitzilopochtli, the god of war. Only the dead in combat, the sacrificed prisoners and the women who died in childbirth arrived in this place. These women were compared to warriors, since they had symbolically fought a battle, and were buried in the patio of the palace, to accompany the sun from the zenith to sunset. These women ideally became the companions of the sun. Omeyocan was a place of permanent enjoyment, where the sun was celebrated accompanied with music, song and dance. The dead who went to Omeyocan, after four years returned to the world, converted into birds of multicolored feathers.
Mictlán was destined for natural deaths. This place was inhabited by Mictlantecuhtli and Mictacacíhuatl, lord and mistress of death. It was a gloomy, windowless place from which it was impossible to get out. The road to get to Mictlán was winding and difficult as the souls had to pass through different places for four years. After this transitional period, the souls arrived at Chicunamictlán, the place where they rested. Help to overcome the path was offered by a dog buried with the deceased, which would have helped the man to cross a river until arriving in front of Mictlantecuhtli. The deceased brought bundles of torches and perfume canes, cotton, colored threads and blankets as an offering to the god. Those who arrived at Mictlán received as a gift four arrows and four torches tied with cotton thread.
The dead children arrived at a special place, called Chichihuacuauhco, where there was a tree from whose branches dripped milk. The children would remain in this place until the end of the human race, and subsequently sent back to earth to repopulate it.
The pre-Columbian funeral was accompanied by offerings that contained two types of objects: those that, in life, had been used by the deceased and those that could have served him in his transit to the other world. For this reason the funeral objects were very varied: musical instruments made of mud, ocarinas, flutes and rattles in the shape of skulls, sculptures representing the gods of death, skulls of different materials (stone), jade, glass, braziers, censers and urns.
The dates in honor of the dead are and were very important, so much so that two months were dedicated to them. During the month called Tlaxochimaco, the celebration called Miccailhuitontli or Feast of the dead was completed around the 16th of July. This festival began when the tree called xocotl was cut, its bark removed and decorated with flowers and offerings.
In the tenth month of the Aztec calendar, the Ueymicailhuitl, or festival of the great dead, was celebrated. This celebration was completed around the 5th of August, at the fall of the xócotl. In this feast there were processions that ended with patrols around the tree. At the end of the feast, the xócotl was knocked down to conclude the celebration. During the whole event, altars were placed to remember the dead, a custom still in use today.
When the Spaniards arrived in America in the 16th century, they merged their own rites with those of the local natives, resulting in a syncretism that mixed European and pre-Columbian traditions. By making All Saints' Day coincide with the Mesoamerican holiday, the Day of the Dead was created. Between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Death is represented crowned and seated on a throne or intent on dancing. At the end of the 19th century José Guadalupe Posada created a personal version of the Santa Muerte that has become fashionable in recent years and known as Catrina. In the last century it has become fashionable to tattoo it.
The indigenous communities still continue to carry on the tradition of this holiday today. Death is seen as a continuation of life and the afterlife is imagined similar to our world where we live as on Earth. During the party, however, it is possible to reunite with loved ones by going back to the world of the living.