Dia de los Muertos 2009: Michoacan and Aguascalientes

On October 31st, a couple of us headed to Aguascalientes for the Festival de las Calaveras (Festival of Skulls). Aguascalientes is a cute colonial town. Our first stop was the Museo de Muerte (Death Museum) that featured paper mache skeletons (special for day of the dead) and then normal exhibits of art and artifacts from Mexcio related to death.

Aguascalientes’ most famous resident is probably Jose Guadalupe Posada, one of Mexico’s most famous lithographers and creator of probably the most used image of a Catrina (the female skeleton often associated with Day of the Dead). There is a small museum in town with many of his prints.

Then we headed down to the fair grounds area where they had a bunch of food stalls, big skulls, and general fair activities.

On Sunday morning, Kurt and I headed to Patzcuaro in the state of Michoacan, and perhaps one of the most famous places for Day of the Dead in Mexico. The indigenous communities around Patzcuaro Lake and on the islands in the lake spend the entire night from the 1st to the 2nd in the cemetery, as well as the 2nd. They build large structures out of marigolds (the official flower of the day of the dead, called Cempasúchil) that vary from community to community. We headed out to the island of Janitzio on the night of the 1st and wandered around the island seeing various altars inside people’s houses and visited the cemetery. We decided to leave around 12 when the majority of the crowds are filling the cemetery and beat the huge line for the boats back to Patzcuaro.

A tip if you ever decide to do Day of the Dead in Patzcuaro…..don’t actually stay in Patzcuaro. We decided to get a hotel room in Santa Clara del Cobre (20 min outside of Patzcuaro) and were about to make a reservation 2 weeks in advance and pay $300 pesos for a room for 2 people (less than $30 usd). Rooms in Patzcuaro are booked months in advance and prices more than double.

The cemetary (from above)

On Monday morning (Nov 2nd), we visited more cemeteries, starting with the local cemetery in Santa Clara del Cobre. The cemetery and flowers seen there are much more similar to what you will see in most areas across Mexico. Graves are cleaned and adorned with flowers and families will spend a significant part of the day there, eating, talking, remembering, but you don’t tend to see the elaborate structures from some of the more rural communities.

Then we visited cemeteries in 2 communities outside of Patzcuaro, Tzintzuntzan and Ihuatzio.

Tzintzuntzan

Ihuatzio