This recap was written as part of my work in Death and Dying at WMU. It is a recap of a video on the Days of the Dead. I’m looking for a link to the video.
Original Submission Date: February 18, 2019
The Days of the Dead video tells the story of Betty and her family who are celebrating the first Days of the Dead celebration since her grandfather has passed over. The movie does a nice job of weaving the history of the Days of the Dead celebration on Lake Patzcuaro, which is considered the gateway to the realm of the dead, with Betty’s personal story. As the movie opens we learn that Betty’s grandfather Augustine, an artist who established their family handicraft business, had recently passed away and we are told that when he was younger he had visited Mexico City and brought back a paper mache calaveras and that his dream was to return to Mexico City and learn to make calaveras. As part of the preparations for the festivities, Betty petitions Santa Muerte to help her obtain her greatest wish of taking a training class about local traditions. After that visit, Betty and her Aunt Julia visit a fortune teller who advises them to honor grandpa’s greatest wish and, that if they do so, grandpa will help Betty achieve her greatest wish.
After some thought, Betty and her aunt realize that grandpa’s greatest wish was to travel to Mexico City and learn how to make the calaveras. They journey to Mexico City where Betty visits Dolores Olmedo Museum to see an exhibit of calaveras and meets with the Linares family who helps her make a calaveras of her grandfather. Aunt Julie has brought crafts to sell and ends up selling them at the Plaza de la Constitución, where modern day vendors mingle with dancers performing Aztec dances. They return to their home on Lake Patzcuaro where preparations for the Days of the Dead are ongoing. Some of these preparations include sprinkling marigolds around the graves, lighting candles for the dead, making special Day of the Dead bread which will feed the dead and serve as their body. During the parade for the Days of the Dead, Betty watches the parade of university students with much interest and we learn that one of her dearest dreams is to go to school to learn about local traditions. During the festivities, she is given the opportunity to learn about Days of the Dead celebration with researchers who are researching the Days of the Dead rituals and we are left to wonder if this is the start of grandfather granting her dearest wish. The last part of the movie shows the Days of the Dead festivities including the food shared with the dead, the all-night vigils, and how the dead are welcomed home with bells.
Reflection
The Days of the Dead video did a nice job of putting complex spiritual information into context by showing it through the lens of family practices. There were a lot of concepts to reflect upon, but I’ve chosen to reflect on the following: cultural exploration versus exploitation, similarities to other cultural festivities, and how celebrations like Days of the Dead help us connect to our past.
Cultural Exploration versus Exploitation
During the early scenes of the movie we are introduced to Betty’s family and told that they are a family of artists who have been making traditional Mexican handicrafts to sell since her grandfather started the business. However, we learn that making these crafts is not very lucrative and that what they sell during the Days of the Dead festival will be their primary income for the year. Later in the video we see that the village is overrun with tourists during the festival and it seems that it is difficult for the villagers to honor their dead because of the throngs of tourists. Although the negative impact is the potential for tourists to interfere with these rituals and the fact that the families may be so busy selling to tourists they are not able to fully participate in the rituals, the positives are that they bring much needed dollars to the region and that if the tourists approach the festivities with an open mind, there is the possibility of a positive culture exchange.
Cultural exploration and knowledge sharing have evolved since the 1800s when Sarah Baartman was taken from her home in Africa and exhibited as an oddity and since 1904 when the United States exhibited indigenous people from a variety of cultures in a “human zoo” at the St. Louis World’s Fair. When I saw the hordes of tourists flocking to Lake Patzcuaro, my immediate thought was that this had the potential for cultural exploitation and the villagers being viewed as savages to be mocked for their beliefs. However, as I reflected on the situation, I realized that the primary difference between this and more exploitative situations was that there did not seem to be an outside entity making money from bringing tourists to the island. Instead it seemed as if tourists had heard about it and were visiting to learn about the culture. The villagers remained in control of the festivities and were in a position to educate outsiders (the team from the university) about their culture. From living in Okinawa and being exposed to Obon celebrations, visiting the Day of the Dead exhibit at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, and participating in the Cleveland Day of the Dead celebration, I do know that participating in cultural celebrations is an amazing way to learn about a people and their rituals. I’ve always been pleasantly surprised at the Cleveland Day of the Dead celebration when Caucasian parents were using the festival as an opportunity to learn about culture versus belittle another culture because it is different.
While I find it wonderful that people visit festivals to learn about cultures, I do find it culturally exploitive when corporations incorporate images from other cultures as a way to make money. For instance, last year during October and November, I saw a major donut chain incorporate calaveras into their advertising, major drug chains selling mass produced day of the dead items, and a retailer selling a Day of the Dead shopping bag. I found these practices distasteful and exploitive.
The examples I’ve given are of minority culture icons being incorporated into mainstream practices/businesses, but the cross-cultural pollination happens in other ways as well. I was at a pagoda in China about 15 years ago and a Chinese man walked into the pagoda wearing a Chicago Bulls shirt. When I told him I was from Chicago, he wanted to talk all about the Bulls. Interestingly enough, the fortune teller in the movie was also wearing a Chicago Bulls shirt. While I am a big proponent of sharing of cultural knowledge, it also concerns me that cultural practices may get diluted as elements from other cultures get woven into them. This was evident in the movie when Aunt Julia was selling her bags in the plaza and it was difficult to sell them because of the proliferation of plastic Halloween items. Another example of this is that it appeared that the fortune teller was using tarot cards to communicate with Augustine and those are not a native Mexican tool. I know from personal experience that a lot of this cultural sharing/appropriation happens at an individual level because when I first became a pagan, my Samhain practices were much more Celtic, but as I’ve learned more about the Day of the Dead and other practices, I’ve started to incorporate Mexican sugar skulls into my rituals. On the surface, this is one woman changing her practices, but if others make the same kind of cultural appropriation the lines between Samhain and Day of the Dead may become muddied at a larger level.
Similarities to other practices
Being raised a Christian in America, I did not have much exposure to practices honoring the dead as a child as it seemed to me that once someone was buried, there were no longer cultural practices to honor them. I was first exposed to cultural ancestor worship when I lived on Okinawa in the early 1990s. I was a civilian auditor for the Air Force who had been posted to Kadena, Air Base Japan and one of the most fascinating aspects of the island to me turtleback tombs that were shaped like a woman’s womb as Okinawans believed that the dead returned to the womb. Living on Okinawa, I also had the opportunity to witness other practices of ancestor veneration like shiimii when people have picnics at their ancestors’ graves and Obon, the three day celebration where the dead are believed to return to visit their descendants. Interestingly enough, it was on Okinawa where I really started practicing Paganism and holding rituals for the sabbats, including Samhain which is the Celtic day to remember the dead.
As I continue to study and learn about death practices, I am always amazed by how similar the practices are between different cultures. This point was driven home again as I watched the Days of the Dead video and learned more about the history of these celebrations and compared the Days of the Dead to the Tomb Sweeping Day in Taiwan that we learned about in our last module. Although the forms of these rituals—Samhain, Days of the Dead, Okinawan practices, and the Taiwanese rituals—are slightly different, they call contain similar elements including: veneration of the dead, spending time with the dead at a home altar or at the cemetery, preparing foods for the dead, the belief that the dead can impact the world of the living, and the belief that there are certain times during the year when the dead can interact with the living.
As I reflected on the rituals of other cultures, it made me sad that American culture does not practice the same time of Ancestor veneration that is practiced in other cultures. However, there was a time in our not too distant past when Americans also picnicked at cemeteries and spent time with their beloved dead. In the late 1800s, many Americans had picnics at cemeteries and spent time in their family plot communing with their loved ones. Although I have not spent a lot of time researching why this custom is no longer practiced beyond reading a few articles that suggest the practice ended because we now have more public parks, I believe that the practice may have faded away as death became more the domain of the medical community and there were fewer home deaths and because America has become a more mobile community and we no longer live close to our family plots.
Connection to our past
The Days of the Dead celebration connects Mexicans with not only their individual ancestors, but also with their ancestral practices all the way back to the Aztecs. Days of the Dead connects individuals to their direct ancestors through putting up altars with representations of their ancestors, tending their ancestors’ graves, and by making special foods to feed their ancestors. It was clear through the video that the people of Mexico believe that their ancestors are still in contact with their families and still work to influence the lives of the living. For instance, the candlemaker said that the dead visited her shop and moved candles as a sign that she needed to make more and Betty’s friend was filled with a sense of peace when her friends visited her. The fortune teller Don Pedros was also in contact with the dead through readings and by his visits to the cemetery. The Mexican people have also woven nature into their practices with their belief that the marigolds light up the path for the dead and that the butterflies carry the souls of the dead to visit their descendants.
One of the most interesting aspects of the Days of the Dead movie for me was how the current Days of the Dead celebrations have a direct connection to the practices of the Aztecs. It was especially interesting to hear how the cross used in the celebrations was not meant to be a Christian cross, but was representative of the four direction with the Sun God in the middle. The story of how the marigolds were given to the Aztecs to honor the dead and that they were a symbol of the sun god is another way how current practices link current day Mexican celebrations to ancient traditions. The researchers were also investigating the markings on the pyramids and what they meant. Another way that modern day traditions echo practices of the past was in the foods prepared for the Days of the Dead. One of the main food was pozole which is a traditional stew made of chilis, hominy, and pork, which has bee substituted for the human flesh used in the days of the Aztecs.
Questions for Future Research
- As we evaluate living traditions that have been handed down through the centuries, how do we evaluate what is an original part of the tradition and what has evolved over time?
- What are the pros and cons of the evolution of traditions?
- How can a designation such as the UNESCO designation protect what is a living tradition?
- As a nation where the primary population is Roman Catholic, how is the concept of heaven and hell promoted by the Roman Catholic church in agreement or conflict with the cultural idea of an afterlife that is celebrated in the Day of the Dead?