I shall start with an explanation of my understanding of the thing. It's a prehispanic (before the Spaniards came) celebration remembering loved ones who have died. It takes place on November 1st and 2nd, with the first night being for kids and the second for adults. There are various ways of going about this commemoration. One is making altares, kind of like shrines to somebody who died. You can do them in your house, and I also saw some in stores and restaurants. They generally have a picture of the person, flowers, candles, and things that the person liked, like food, drinks, even cigarettes. Though I don't think many people actually believe it, the traditional belief is that their spirits come to the altar the night of the 1st or 2nd and eat the food. Similar to these altars is the decoration of the person's grave. There's all the things that the altar has, plus a huge structure of flowers, generally orange carnations or some fuzzy purple flower called xempaxúchil (gracias, Edgar) on the back of the grave. So before el dia de los muertos, family members go to the graveyard ("panteón") and set up really elaborate decorations.
Now I shall move on to what I did. The whole week before was filled with confusion about who was going to go where, what we would do, etc. One of my classes was going to have a trip to some towns in Michoacán, the state just to the south of Jalisco (where GDL is) that has the best dia de los muertos celebrations, but not enough people wanted to go.
Oh wait. The weekend started off with a good Americanicized halloween party at the apt of a fellow international student. I was a Chivas player. Here's a picture of me and Teo, who was a tejano singer or something like that. :)
Mmk. So that was Friday night. Then Saturday morning, Edgar drove me, Heather, and her friend Tamami to Michoacán. To be honest, I don't remember the names of the towns we went to because (a) it was a while ago and (b) I'm not really sure I even knew then. I think the two places were Tzinzunzan and Patzcuaro. We did normal touristy stuff like, well, a tour that some theater group or something organized. We also walked around this big outdoor market and saw a bunch of cool artisany things. In the centro were a bunch of stands where people were selling sugar skulls and skeletons and coffins and stuff like that-- also fabulous and traditional.
Now for an excessively academic tidbit. I had to read part of this book by Octavio Paz, a famous Mexican writer, in my "Culture and Thought of Mexico" class. This is one of the things he says: "To the resident of New York, Paris, or London, the word 'death' is never pronounced because it burns the lips. Mexicans, on the other hand, frequent it, caress it, they sleep with it, they celebrate it. It is one of their favorite games and their most permanent love." Anyways, sugar skulls, sometimes with your name specially written on it, are a good example of that.
We also visited some neat prehispanic ruins there:
Here's a really cool picture that you might actually not find interesting at all. But I enjoyed it because I'm a big nerd. In Tzintzuntzan, there was like this big park thing that had a church and an ex-convent. In the middle of the park was a stone cross that I imagine the Spanish Franciscan missionaries built. Anyway, the cool part is that I had talked about this in class (same one as the Octavio Paz book). We learned that they didn't put up crucifixes because that's really intimidating if you're trying to convert somebody from an indigenous religion--it's kind of hard to grasp why someone would kill their deity...So instead it's just a plain cross (St. Anthony's style!) with symbols representing the crucifixion, like a crown of thorns and a hammer. Check it out:
We also got to visit a graveyard, both during they day and at night. During the day, everyone was decorating the graves, though they had pretty much finished, and at night, when they were hanging out or even sleeping by them. Of course there were plenty of tourists like us traipsing around. The professor of the class that I was going to go on the trip with (David, as we call him, de Cultura y pensamiento de Mexico) assured us that it's not disrespectful to look at all the graves and take pictures because the family members that are there are used to the tourism. He also told us that last year, somebody even invited them to hang out with him at the grave. No one did that for us, but it was amazing to see the graveyard, filled with flowers and--at night--completely lit up. Here are some pictures:
Later on, we met up with some other friends:Eva, Omar, Breta (sp?), and Omar's dad. Then we all went to see Don Juan Tenorio in that same town. It's a Spanish play by Jose Zorilla that I read in AP Spanish lit, so when I saw an ad for it, I freaked out and decided we had to go. It was cool and all, but also on a literal level it was absolutely FREEZING. And the Spanish was way over my head. So I gave up after like five minutes. The plus side of that event was that we bought some ponche, which is hot tea made in a huge vat with a bunch of fruits and flowers that stay in the bottom of the cup...and sometimes alcohol. So if there is alcohol, basically it is Mexican PJ. Oh, and I bought pan de los muertos-- sweet bread with crossbones on it. Yum!
After that, we were going to head back to the ruins to watch a recreation of a game that the indigenous people there played: like soccer, but with the ball lit on fire. So we walked from the outside auditorium, past the graveyard, and up this big hill where there were a ton of teenagers standing around on the side of the road getting trashed. Apparently, for some young people, el dia de los muertos is turning into an excuse to party and moving farther from the traditions. But for others, the traditions are alive and well, as we definitely saw. Once we got up the hill of drunkards, we found out the juego de pelota encendido had already happened at 9 (by this point it was 3). So it was sad we didn't get to go to that, but it's ok--we saw plenty of really neat things. We were going to sleep in the car and head back to Guadalajara in the morning, but we ended up just driving back right then.
So even after all the pre-trip confusion, it ended up being really amazing...and I'm really glad I got to spend el dia de los muertos in Michoacan. That was the cheesiest concluding sentence ever. But it's true, I'm glad it worked out. Mmk! Spanish lesson time! Another simple one: nos vemos = see you later. Literally we see each other. Mmk that is all.
Ooh, that is not all. I finally got a plane ticket (cheap..yay!) and I'll be home from December 9th till January 4th, hopefully with a Columbia visit in there!
Next post: weekend trip to the mountains and more. Get excited.
Also: pardon the deteriorating English. Whew. You should see me try to write homonyms.
1 comment:
my butt is so soar! ;)
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