Los Dias de Los Muertos y Mexico

Death as an Identity

After such a long journey into the mind of Mexican identity, I feel like I have gained a better understanding of the Day of the Dead's impact on Mexico.  I looked at several factors that relate to Mexico from the interwoven history involving indigenous populations and Spanish invaders all the way to contemporary society that emphasizes this festivity.  From this spectrum of history I looked at the progression of how Mexico sought to understand its own past and appreciate this in the present.  All in all, the common theme that occurred in Mexico is death from the sacrificial ceremonies of the Mexica, the offerings during colonial times, the artistic expression of death in works from Posada, and finally in the expression found in Day of the Dead and the ofrenda.

In trying to answer my question of how Day of the Dead represents Mexico's identification with death, I tried to cover a variety of different approaches and responses to this topic of death.  When looking historically, the Mexica relied upon the use of death as a means of preserving life and would participate in sacrifice.  That aspect of the Mexico presents the duality of life and death that seems eminent in Mexico and Day of the Dead as the living imitate the dead by accepting the presence of death.  This duality is also present in the worship of Santa Muerte, as many Mexicans ask the representation of death to aid them with healing powers or even escape death (like the drug traffickers or police officers/members of the army after them). 

The ofrenda, so common during the Day of the Dead festivities, is another example of Mexico embracing its past and the duality of life and death.  These offerings of food, candy, and other offerings were similar to those found in Spain and Mesoamerica for the spirits of those that passed away or even to keep spirits at bay.  In contemporary Mexico, the families prepare a feast for their deceased relatives once a year as a clear understanding of the constant presence of death in society.  One of the most visible signs of death are the calaveras (either candy or decorated skulls).  These calaveras have been present in the art of Spain and the Mexica and continue to display death as commonly as they would the Virgin of Guadalupe.

The final way I have tried to look at answering this question came most directly with the work of Octavio Paz. With The Labyrinth of Solitude, I was able to figure out how Mexico could view death.  Often times they would embrace death as something guaranteed and they would at times poke fun at death as a means of physically accepting its presence.  Since the theme involved solitude for Mexican people, Paz demonstrated that the Day of the Dead was a way in which Mexican people could interact with other people to embrace this reality of death and perhaps escape their solitude. 

Overall, I enjoyed my experience looking at how Mexico embraces death and how Day of the Dead is the symbol for this relationship.  Death has become almost a national monument for Mexico and it is built on the collective experiences of those that partake in Day of the Dead.

Santa Muerte, an Introduction

The Beginning of the End

For my final discussion before my concluding post, I wanted to look at a very recent development in Mexico regarding death: Santa Muerte.  Although she is not directly associated with the festivals known as Los Dias de Los Muertos, Santa Muerte expresses some of the themes that I have looked at throughout this semester particularly the relationship of life and death.  She has garnered media attention only within the past decade, but has quite a long and colorful history that resembles that of the Day of the Dead festivals.  Santa Muerte has several different incarnations, but for the purpose of this blog I will only focus on the aspects that are the most relevant.  Yet, if anyone wishes to learn more about her in greater detail I will provide a link below that is quite informative.

Santa Muerte

 There are a variety of saints that represent death within the Americas, but Santa Muerte holds certain distinctions that others do not have.  First and foremost, "Santa Muerte stands alone as the sole female saint of death from Chile to Canada." (Chesnut 7)  Along with this distinction, she has become quite popular in the past decade throughout Mexico and has begun to invade the U.S.  Within Mexico, she has gathered around five million devotees. (Chesnut 8)  These are impressive feats for religious beliefs and should definitely be recognized.

With that said, many of you would be asking how does a saint that personifies death connect with the Mexican holiday of Day of the Dead?  This has to do with a theme that Mexico has sought to understand since Pre-colonial times: the duality of life and death.  The Day of the Dead represents the reverence for the dead by the living for a couple of days a year and Santa Muerte is the representation of death devoted to by the living.  In fact, "...one of the great paradoxes of the cult is that a saint who is the very personification of death is charged with preserving and extending life through her awesome healing powers." (Chesnut 24)  Along with this, the Day of the Dead seek to revere their deceased family or any spirit of the dead.  Likewise, Santa Muerte has become a figure so revered that she has become almost an adopted family member to the Mexican people.  Probably the most visual comparison between Santa Muerte and the Day of the Dead would be the presence of the altar similar to the holiday.  In fact, "...adherents view her as in some ways a supernatural version of themselves.  Tequila, beer, cigarettes, and chocolate are placed at her altars in the belief that the White Girl [Santa Muerte] likes consuming the same food, drink, and smokes that devotees enjoy." (Chesnut 56)

As the previous paragraph demonstrated, Santa Muerte has a relationship with her devotees and sometimes involves recreational drugs, narcotics, and alcohol.  This has become a part of the negative image that Santa Muerte has developed because she has been associated with drug cartels.  One of the primary purposes that drug traffickers use her image is for some form of protection.  That is why, "as a defensive weapon, the Godmother's steel scythe shields tens of thousands of Mexicans emploed by the various cartels from the bullets fired by rival cartel members and cops and soldiers and from knives, machetes, and even vats of acid employed by syndicate assassins." (Chesnut 98)  She is also used by prisoners as a hope for early release during their sentence often resulting in having a tattoo of her or other form of devotion.  Similar to an ofrenda during Day of the Dead, "lines of cocaine, prison, moonshine, cigarettes, and marijuana joints figure among the common offerings at her altars." (Chesnut 15)  Yet, Santa Muerte has been used by those on the other side of the law, including police officers, prison guards and members of the army, hoping for a similar protection against the drug cartels and death.  One surprising fact about this is that, "a giant portrait of the skeleton saint stands at the entrance of the barracks of an elite police commando unit in Mexico City." (Chesnut 107)  Much like Day of the Dead, Santa Muerte seems to be devoted by those from opposite walks of life.

Although Santa Muerte has several purposes for her devotees, I wanted to look at one last aspect of her: healing abilities.  She is willing to help those that are ill, but it comes at the cost if the commitment is not kept.  In fact, "if she is considered by many to be the most potent worker on the religious landscape, in similar fashion she has a reputation as a harsh punisher for those who break  their contacts with her..." (Chesnut 63)  Most of the time this will include some type of devotion whether a medallion with her image or some offering, but many are willing to do such like the Day of the Dead.  This is because many of her devotees rely on manual labor and need to be healthy, so they will turn to her to insure that they stay healthy or recover quickly if unhealthy. (Chesnut 168) Along with healing powers, Santa Muerte is also sought to help people with any addiction they possess or at least ask for her protection if they use drugs or alcohol.  In fact, "devotees who aren't ready or willing to give up their habit can ask the Godmother [Santa Muerte] to watch over them as they drug themselves." (Chesnut 170)  Overall, in this role Mexican people hope to use her abilities to prolong their lives, which adds to the duality of using death or the representation of death to help prolong life.

Source(s) cited:
Chesnut, R. Andrew. Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

Into the Labyrinth of Solitude Pt. 2

Final Progression

As I stated in my last blog post, I am going to conclude Octavio Paz's Labyrinth of Solitude, but I will be figuring out what I want to look at in my final series of blog posts next week and present it the following week.  Unlike last post, I mentioned that I was going to look at Paz's work but I did not state why per say.  Although my project is looking at how the Day of the Dead represents the Mexico's identification with death, Paz's work looks to understand the various aspects of Mexican identity past and present.  His work does an excellent job as it looks as various facets that pertain to Mexican philosophy and I would absolutely recommend this to anyone based solely on its philosophical and poetic discussions.  However, I read through the last half of this work and found it focused less on the identification of death and more of the political background to the idea of solitude as it relates to Mexican identity.  For the purpose of this blog, I want to focus solely on the aspects that help me understand how death relates to Mexican identity and how this may relate to the Day of the Dead.

Solitude and Death

One of the big discussions in Chapter Four was about the symbolic representations that death can present to the Mexican in solitude.  The first major example I found was how Paz demonstrated that women both represent the beginning of life and have some connection with death themes.  As Paz puts it, "She is an image of both fecundity and death.  In almost every culture the goddesses of creation are also goddesses of destruction." (Paz 66)  He also demonstrates how the Mexican people have to use unconventional ways to express themselves, perhaps the Day of the Dead could be an excellent example.  I feel this way because when discussed the opening up of the Mexican expression he said, "It is revealing that our intimacy never flowers in a natural way, only when incited by fiestas, alcohol or death." (Paz 70)  With lines such as this, it is no surprise that many of the Mexican people turn to the Day of the Dead for expression.

The last couple of examples reflect how the Mexican people understood death regarding their ancestry with the Mexica and Catholicism.  Paz used an example of Jesus' Crucifixion to express the duality of life and death that the Mexican people believe in.  With this description Paz believes that, "on the one hand, the wounds are flowers, pledges of resurrection; on the other, they are reiteration that life is the sorrowful mask of death." (Paz 83)  The reason Paz uses the example of the Crucifixion of Jesus is because of what Catholicism provided for the Mexican people. According to Paz, "Catholicism re-established their ties with the world and the other world.  It gave them back a sense of their place on earth; it nurtured their hopes and justified their lives and deaths." (Paz 102)  The Mexica and other groups in colonial Mexico needed a new sense of unity after the fall of the Aztec empire and what they believed as the betrayal of their gods and goddesses.  When the Mexica felt the moment of immobility from conquest, "which is also the moment of vertigo, the Aztec people raise their eyes toward the heavens: the celestial omens are adverse, and the people feel the attraction of death." (Paz 94)  In other words, the Mexica may have accepted their death and allowed Spanish conquest due to this betrayal.

  Yet, Paz believes that there is a way in which the Mexicans can be able to connect with the the Mexica past.  This example would revolve around the lost tomb of Cuauhtemoc , the last Mexica emperor before the fall of Tenochtitlan.  "The mystery of his burial place is one of their [Mexicans] obsessions.  To discover it would mean nothing less than the return to our origins, to reunite ourselves with our ancestry, to break out of our solitude.  It would be resurrection." (Paz 84)  The idea of uniting with the origins of the ancient past is something that Paz believes was a major factor during the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th Century.  For the Mexicans, "...it was a movement attempting to reconquer our past, to assimilate it and make it live in the present." (Paz 147)

     Cuauhtemoc (European depiction with the Conquistadores)

 The final point that Paz focused on was how certain fiestas in Mexico allow the Mexican people to break from the ideas of solitude within their culture.  As Paz put it, "myths and fiestas, whether secular or religious, permit man to emerge from his solitudes and become one with creation." (Paz 211)  I believe this may indirectly apply to the Day of the Dead, since it is a fiesta within Mexican culture that may be viewed as secular or religious depending on your perspective.  Since Paz was always discussing throughout this work that the single Mexican seeks to escape the labyrinth of solitude, it makes since that a fiesta such as the Day of the Dead is a way for everyone to join a communion that embraces and celebrates the dead.  For the "...religious ritual, and the constant presence of the dead, create[s] a center of relationships which restrict independent action, thus protecting the individual from solitude and the group from dissolution." (Paz 205)  Without the presence of fiestas such as the Day of the Dead, the individual might feel a sense of isolation which may lead that person closer to the realm of death.  As Paz said, "permanent exile, then, is the same as a death sentence." (206)

Source cited:
Paz, Octavio. The Labyrinth of Solitude. New York: Grove Press, Inc. 1961

Into the Labyrinth of Solititude

Research and Development

For this week, I decided to look at a work that has been cited in some of the other sources I have used thus far in my research.  The work is entitled The Labyrinth of Solitude by Octavio Paz and it focuses on understanding the identity of what it meant to be Mexican.  Paz's specialty was political philosophy and poetry in Mexico during his lifetime (1914-1998).  After beginning to look into this work by him, I have found some excellent insight into what exemplifies Mexican identity regarding death and some correlations to the Day of the Dead.  I will break up this analysis into two main entries to provide a complete understanding of his work.

Death, Identity, and the Day of the Dead

Paz first focuses broadly at identifying what the characteristics of Mexican society are.  He emphasizes that because of the colorful history of Mexico which often included violence, invasion, and a mixture of heritage many Mexicans feel a sense of "solitude" as the work represents.  From this solitude, many Mexicans believe that they do not belong to the rest of the world, especially compared to the rest of North America.  In fact, Paz demonstrates that "this Mexicanism...floats, never quite existing, never quite vanishing." (Paz 13)  Along with this, a continued sense of duality between life and death among the Mexican people is prevalent which brings a reverence for both.  As Paz put it, "our cult of death is also a cult of life, in the same way that love is a hunger for life and a longing for death." (Paz 23)

It is from this duality of life and death that some of the familiar relationships with death imagery comes from.  Paz demonstrates this when he says, "in the hubbub of a fiesta night our voices explode into brilliant lights, and life and death mingle together, while their vitality becomes a fixed smile that denies old age and death but that changes life to motionless stone." (Paz 24)  This duality can be traced to the Mexica/Aztec ancestry in Mexico, as I have stated throughout my blog posts, as they depended on the preservation of life through death.  "...To the Aztecs it [death] was the profoundest way of participating in continuous regeneration of the creative forces, which were always in danger of being extinguished if they were not provided with blood, the sacred food." (Paz 56)  This traditional concept of life and death was inherited into modern thought in Mexico as they believed that life and death were representative of each other.  This is evident when Paz stated, "our deaths illuminate our lives.  If our deaths lack meaning, our lives also lacked it." (Paz 54)

This philosophical analysis by Paz was the perfect foundation for demonstrating how death characterized Mexican identity, particularly as it related to the Day of the Dead.  The festivities of this day were not only meant to be celebratory, but also continue the sense of duality towards society.  According to Paz, "our fiestas are explosions.  Life and death, joy and sorrow, music and mere noise are united, not to re-create or recognize themselves, but to swallow each other up." (Paz 53)  The festivities also demonstrate the dark humor that Mexico appreciates with the various aspects of Day of the Dead.  "Sugar-candy skulls, and tissue-paper skulls and skeletons strung with fireworks...our popular images always poke fun at life, affirming the nothingness and insignificance of human existence." (Paz 59)  It is clear that Mexican society is not afraid to demonstrate their acceptance of death since it is as fundamental as the air they breath.

Paz also continues to compare the identification with death of Mexico with other Western societies.  He particularly discusses how Mexico publicly discuss death as a way of handling their fear of death.  For Mexico, "...death is not hidden away: he looks at it face to face, with impatience, disdain or irony." (Paz 58)  In comparison, Western society seems to avoid death to the point of not even mentioning it in everyday conversation.  Paz believes that this is simply ignorance since death is a part of everything from cemeteries to hospitals that seek to prevent death.  Paz put it perfectly when he said, "it is useless to exclude death from images, our words, our ideas, because death will obliterate all of us, beginning with those who ignore it or pretend to ignore it." (Paz 60)  Death is inevitable regardless of what society one is born in and Mexico chooses to accept it even if it is limited.  Regarding death, "he praises it, celebrates it, cultivates it, embraces it, but he never surrenders himself to it." (Paz 59)

Source Cited:
Paz, Octavio. The Labyrinth of Solitude. New York: Grove Press, Inc. 1961

El Dia Todos los Difuntos

Continuation and Correction

Today, I am going to continue with the documentary that I began yesterday and conclude it today.  However, I feel I should correct myself a little bit yesterday.  Yesterday was All Saints' Day, but most of my blog post was about the events of October 31st, when Mexico has their world renowned celebration where they dress up.  November 1st and 2nd are celebrated in a different way and I will address those today.  I will finish discussion on the 2nd part of the documentary and also discuss the 3rd part for today's post.

All Saints' Day revisited
  

 BBC Documentary Part 2 cont.

The image above is a typical scene one would see on All Saints' Day in Mexico as Mexicans decorate the graves of their loved ones.  Before this, the families begin preparations for their deceased loved ones' favorite dishes.  They do such because of an understanding of how their loved ones will return and want something they enjoyed when they were alive.  When the journalist visits with a local historian, she states that just before a local grandmother passed away, she wanted to make sure her family knew how to properly make her favorite dish so that she would be able to enjoy it more when her spirit returned. (BBC 9:01)

The second part of this day is when the spirits of the deceased children return and visit the ofrendas of their family or other families if they do not have any family alive.  The Mexican people truly believe that the spirits have come back and notice this with signs of a breeze and a movement of the smoke from incense after the local church signals at 3:00 p.m. that the spirits have arrived.  The journalist even acknowledged the presence of the spirits when he said, "I'm not particularly a sentimental person...and I don't believe in ghosts, but...there is a huge sense of a build up to something...," as if he could feel a presence of their spirits. (BBC 12:11)  The ofrenda is clearly represented in this section as the family begin to decorate it with food for the spirits of their deceased family members.  When the journalist asks why they do such, the daughter replies, "The altar has great significance in this village.  What we are putting on now signifies life and abundance, what the Earth has given us, and what our loved one use to enjoy when they were alive.  That's why we're offering the best fruit of the season." (BBC 15:28)

BBC Documentary Part 3

The final part of this day is when the families go to the cemeteries to decorate the graves of their family members (as is seen with the first image).  After decorating the graves, the cemetery becomes place of celebration for the living as they stay for hours and celebrate with each other and spirits that are present.  They try to create a peaceful environment for the spirits within the cemetery so that the spirits may return in a calm manner.  This can be seen with the local Catholic church performing songs and chants to call upon the spirits. (BBC 0:40)  All of these actions within the cemetery are common because the people possess a close relationship with death and embrace this even during their lifetime.  When the journalist asked the daughter if she would still have a humorous understanding of death if she were to die the next day, she replies, "Yes.  It makes it easier, it's in our hands, life is short and only in death are we really alive." (BBC 1:23)

All Souls' Day

The final day is quite similar to the events of the previous day as this is when the spirits of the deceased adults return.  The families prepare a feast for not only themselves but for their deceased relatives, usually of their favorite dishes.  After that, the families go to the ofrenda again as the church signals the return of the adult spirits.  It has a similar spiritual connection with the dead that the previous day did in which the presence of the spirits are felt.  After the initial return of the adult spirits, the dinner for the evening is served (first to the spirits on the ofrenda and then to the rest of the families).  The adult spirits are then guided by the sound of fireworks back to their realm until next year.  This experience is not one of sadness, but one of anticipation for the families in Mexico as it will give them something to look forward to next year.  This is evident when the journalist compares his views with that of the Mexican people when he says "...you don't just acknowledge the death once, you can look forward to the return as long as you live." (BBC 9:52)  After the spirits have left, the families continue to feast and drink to their lives and to the memories of the spirits.

Sources Cited: 
BBC. “Feasts – Mexico 2 of 3 – BBC Culture Documentary Dia De Los Muertos.” YouTube Web site. YouTube video file. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFt8-WdstQA   (accessed 1 November 2013)

BBC. “Feasts – Mexico 3 of 3 – BBC Culture Documentary – Dia de los Muertos.” YouTube Web site. YouTube video player. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl25Uf9RpdA (accessed 1 November 2013)