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

Vacation 4: Santa Clara del Cobre and Patzcuaro

Santa Clara del Cobre

After the lava expedition, we continued eastward to Patzcuaro (same town I visited over the Christmas holidays). On Saturday morning, the National Copper Festival was beginning in Santa Clara del Cobre (cobre is copper in Spanish). We arrived just in time to see the crowning of the copper queen and a parade of men on horses and with old muskets. Santa Clara was a huge copper mining town in the 1500’s. Since then all the mines have closed, but copper working is still a huge part of the town and its economy. You can visit workshops and see cooper being pounded and molded into all manner of items.

The rest of the afternoon and next morning were spent wandering around in Patzcuaro and walking up to a scenic view of the city and lake Patzcuaro. Sunday afternoon I headed back to Puebla in what I expected to be an enjoyable 4.5 hr bus ride to Mexico City's Norte station, but turned into a nearly 8 hour adventure that included a baby in my lap for 1/2 the trip and 10 min stop to find change for the taco lady that got on the bus.

Vacation Map