El Día de los Muertos — Then and Now
Their pickup trucks loaded with vats and food trays, the weathered faces peered from dented cars as they inched through a white-washed suburb of Phoenix on their way to the old cemetery.
Parents tending manicured lawns hurried their children inside and drew the drapes.
The descendants and loved ones of the entombed had spent the week weeding and scrubbing each family plot. This burial ground had been in the “Mexican American” part of town until gentrification forced out the original residents. More difficult to move the dead. So, each year the living have been allowed to return to commune with their ancestors in this resting place.
In 1990, I flew to Phoenix to attend the annual meeting of the Congress On Research in Dance. We ethnographers and anthropologists planned to spend the night at the cemetery, in the last decade before cell phone cameras might have interfered with the sacred intent of this day. A few other “tourists” straggled through during the night, but most of la gente in the cemetery were families who made the annual pilgrimage to honor the departed.
The sun slid behind the mountains, and bonfires flared at each family plot. Odor of simmering chocolate mole. Petals of orange and yellow cempasúchil (Mexican marigolds) dropped from callused fingers to guide the spirits back to their resting places the following day. Candles flickered, incense burned, and families huddled against the desert chill. Elders kneeled with their shawls around grandchildren and pointed to yellowed photos brought from home altars, transmitting family lore to the next generation.
Word to the wise: don’t call this day “Mexican Halloween.”
There is, in fact, a historical connection. The original inhabitants of this region held sacred ceremonies for their ancestors, but European invaders forced them to abandon their religious practices, so they found a place on the Christian calendar to hide their rituals. All Saints Day and All Souls Day at the beginning of November were European holy days where, for a few hours, the veil lifted between the living and the dead. For the indigenous, a reluctant but necessary accommodation.
Over centuries, however, Catholicism and ancient beliefs melded, this transmutation occurring perhaps even in the souls of the mestizo people. Crosses and other symbols of Christianity appeared among the altar displays. A photograph of the departed ancestor served as the centerpiece, surrounded by objects representing the four elements — earth (food and flowers), air (incense), fire (candles), and water (the favorite beverage of the departed, usually alcoholic). Filled glasses sat at the altar, and by morning the liquid would have partially evaporated in the desert air — proof of spirit visitation.
Women now serve plates with Day of the Dead food — calabaza en tacha (pumpkin cooked in syrup), nopales (sliced prickly pear cactus leaves), tunas (flowers from said cactus), pan de muerto (sweet bread molded into the shapes of bones), and, for the children, calaveritas de azucar (tiny decorated sugar skulls). Upon request, la señora would reach under her stool and pour from a small bottle: “Mescal, for those who can handle it.” Burning raw liquor.
When twilight gave way to starlit night, the “Pascola dancers” and their tall headdresses danced into the open space in the center of the cemetery. The scholars of dance culture among us hurried to gain a front row position. Boys and men aged ten to sixty, dressed in animal loincloths and medieval capes, rattles in hand, moved in two synchronized files, accompanied by a single drumbeat. They chanted in Mayo and other indigenous languages, repeating hops and turns with subtle variations. The sequences wore on for mesmerizing hours, its purpose not to entertain, but to focus the collective consciousness.
When I glanced away from the dancers, I saw children playing hide-and-seek in deep shadows behind the tombstones.
The Pascola dancers made their exit, and the riveting Yaqui Deer Dance took center stage. One at a time, a man or a boy mimed the hunted animal, horns strapped to his head, the end a dramatic and protracted death.
At last, in the hazy morning chill, while their descendants packed up cooking pots and trickled out of the cemetery, one could imagine the spirits of the dead returning to their repose for another year.
The Latinx theater in my home city of Portland, Oregon, has commissioned an original play each year built on the theme of the deceased returning to visit their loved ones, with altars on display in the gallery rooms. In addition, my writing group, Los Porteños, would present an afternoon of readings and music. This year a “Zoom play” about Las Adelitas, women who fought in the Mexican Revolution, will reference the coronavirus and contemporary Latinx political issues.
In the Phoenix area, during the intervening decades, the holiday, “Mikiztli” (an Aztec word) or “Day of the Dead” in more secular venues, moved to schools, art centers, museums, and churches, with events held throughout late October and early November. A mixture 23 of education and entertainment — mariachi bands, Mexican baile folklorico (folkloric dances from all regions of Mexico), masks and face-paint depicting calacas (skeletons), a giant participatory altar, and sales of handicrafts, souvenirs, and artwork.
This year, Phoenix struggles along with the rest of Arizona, against outbreaks of La Covid, yet resists efforts to fully lock down public life. Day of the Dead announcements appear alongside Covid-19 alerts, and one major venue, Mesa Arts, has made the difficult decision to produce their annual festival virtually this season, just as the dance scholars were forced to hold a virtual conference in September. To add to the tumult of this year’s celebration, a contentious presidential election will reach its climax the very next day.
And another asteroid passes close to our planet. Recall that Arizona is the state where a meteor fell to earth millennia ago and the crater lies intact in the desert — a tourist attraction, a theology of irony.
In the homes of the original residents of this barrio in Phoenix — coerced years ago by economic forces to move to the outskirts of town — we can predict altars, rituals, and food will be as elaborate and lovingly prepared as ever. But in the old cemetery, how many more family plots will reveal freshly dug turf or new headstones? What can we predict there? What can we predict anywhere in this year of the dead? Will the burial grounds lie abandoned as illness and unease grip the nation? In all this, to one scholar of dance, but a single truth appears certain.
The ancestors await our answers.
Catherine Evleshin is an ethnologist of Latin American festival culture. Her fiction appears in Among Animals 2 (Ashland Creek Press) and elsewhere.