Deadly Origins...

Over the course of two days in Mexico, a phenomenon occurs that embodies the rich cultural history of the land it inhabits.  Anyway else, November 1st and 2nd represent a period of religious zeal in celebration of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day.  In Mexico, they celebrate the Day of the Dead.

Dia De Los Muertos

This celebration has different meanings to every individual, but one ever present feature consists of the visual representation of not only culture but also a comfort with death.  For the rest of this semester, I seek to find an answer as to why Mexico possesses such a strong identification with death as it pertains to the Day of the Dead.  My initial post on the matter may be quite lengthy, but I will try throughout the semester to break my research down for the ease of understanding.

My research began with gaining a basic understanding of the topic I was after.  My first decision would be to look for a particular article from Jstor.com that related to the Day of the Dead.  The first article I found was one by Stanley Brandes entitled "Sugar, Colonialism, and Death: On the Origins of Mexico's Day of the Dead." (if the link provides you difficulty, go to Jstor and type in the title)

Sugar, Colonialism, and Death

Within this article I was able to gain a basic understanding of the Day of the Dead.  Brandes described how this celebration occurred on the same days as the Christian observances on November 1st and 2nd, but he stated that Mexico displays their own understanding of the holiday at it relates to death.  From this point, I learned some of the real understandings those that celebrate this observance really believe with regard to death.

"Life and death are inseparable and when the former lacks meaning, the latter becomes equally meaningless.  Mexican death is a mirror of Mexican life." (Brandes 273)

This idea takes an optimistic viewpoint towards death as it is just as important as life.  This is an important insight into Mexican culture, but Brandes focuses on identifying where this mindset originated: either from Mesoamerica or Europe.  Both images below represent Day of the Dead, but each demonstrate strong ties to either Europe of Mesoamerican culture.  This makes defining the origins of the Day of the Dead quite difficult.

To fully answer this question, Brandes sought to emphasize the role of food for ritual purposes.  The ofrenda, or offering, plays a key role in Day of the Dead as it is placed upon the tomb of a loved one that has passed away.  This would allow the people to interact with the spirits of their loved ones by providing specific foods they enjoyed.  This offering was used by Catholics in Spain, but a similar offering was also done in several civilizations in Mesoamerica including the Mexica (or Aztecs). 

Brandes could not be definitive with his understanding of the origins of this observance, but could agree that the Day of Dead represents a duality of European and Mesoamerican heritage.  This presents a common cultural issue in former colonies: globalization vs. localization.  Mexico seems to have taken their local understanding of death and applied it to an international observance to create something unique to  Mexican culture.

I will continue to look into the Mexican perspective on death relating to the Day of the Dead throughout the semester. 

Sources: Brandes, Stanley. "Sugar, Colonialism, and Death: On the Origins of Mexico's Day of the Dead." Comparative Studies in Society and History 39 no. 2 (Apr. 1997) http://www.jstor.org/stable/179316 (accessed September 7, 2013)