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

Xantolo en la Huasteca

After wrapping everything up with work late on Friday night, we headed to Huejutla, hidalgo for Día de los Muertos. The area is known as the Huasteca and includes parts of the states of Veracruz, Hidalgo, San Luis Potosí, and a little of Puebla. There is a very distinct culture and still many indigenous people that live in the area, which is partly why Xantolo (the name given to the festival for día de los muertos in the Huasteca) is so different from other parts of Mexico. The altars are all adorned with an arch made of marigolds and instead of the traditional looking bread (pan de muertos), the bread is made in the form of animals and people. There are also traditional dances, one where the men dress up as women and another called “Comanche” where the dancers wear wooden masks and represent the link between the living and the dead.

Altar

Bread in the form of dolls, flowers, and animals

More bread, hanging from the arch over the altar

Papel picado

Row of altars

From Huejutla, we crossed into the state of Veracruz and went to the town of Tempoal. Planning on only spending the morning there, we arrived to find that the dances and festivities were later in the day. However, the market was already busy and there were a series of altar displays. The above photos were from Tempoal. Planning on returning to Tempoal in the afternoon for the dances (and they were shooting a TV special), we headed to Tantoyuca, another small Veracruzana town with one of the best markets I have seen. The zocalo of Tantoyuca was also filled with altars and people in wooden masks.

On the bus back to Tempoal you could see preparations for the night´s events on the dirt roads to the smaller towns. People had their bundles of marigolds and the men were already in their dresses and masks for the dances.

After waiting through the TV introduction for the night´s actual events (there is a huge push to get more national recognition for Xantolo and it is virtually unknown to international tourists, we were the only gringos in the area), some of the most amazing dances I have seen in Mexico began. All the dances were set to a trio playing Huapongo music (you can hear it in the video clip). There were a mix of men, women, and children, all dancing in hand-craved wooden masks with amazing outfits. Each colonia (neightborhood) in Tempoal had a dance group representing them and each seemed to get better and better as the night went on. The governor even stopped by for a while which was cause to set off the end of the preformance fireworks in the middle of the event.