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| Altar Competition at the Centro Cultural Refugio in Tlaqueplaque |
At first I hadn't been convinced that Day of the Dead in Guadalajara would be so unique. I had been to celebrations in Austin and Chicago, and didn't know what to expect in the city. Friends and acquaintances suggested traveling to Patzcuaro or Morelia to see how it’s still "traditionally" celebrated. I gave it a thought, remembering that my friend Benjamin lives in Morelia, but ended up staying in the city to teach my class on Jumpa Lahiri's The Interpreter of Maladies and Gayatri Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” (this fabulous experience merits a separate blog). I did my utmost to experience as many angles on the celebration as possible, and, in the end, was glad to witness it here.
Two Thursdays ago, I attended a play called “Mujeres de Arena” (“Women of Sand”) at the Museo del Periodismo (Museum of Journalism) on Alcalde Avenue with my friends S and J. The play vividly and cruelly exposed some of the tragic issues surrounding femicide in Cuidad Juarez (According to Amnesty International more than 370 young women and girls had been murdered in the cities of Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua since 2005). Sometimes the cast of five women would wear white, as angels, showing the audience how, contrary to images of them in the press, these women (the youngest a girl of 12) hadn’t “deserved” their fate, only going about their regular business as women and doing nothing out of the ordinary. At other times, the cast would wear sinister black. There was also a curtain with light shining on it and the actresses behind it, allowing us to imagine some of the horrifying acts of rape, but, alternately, also see them in beautiful and innocent silhouette profile as lively women still alive.
The audience sat in chairs and on benches forming a circle in the museum foyer around a stripped-down stage level. Incense burned and lamps created an eery atmosphere and much doubt about what was actually happening on stage (exacerbated by the huge columns in our line of vision). Although the drama played in several theatres in the city (most were free entrance), this performance was dedicated to a 28-yr-old Guadalajara actress who had recently suffered a brain hemorrhage and was fighting for her own life at the Hospital Civil. My friend J, an actor and puppeteer, who knows her well, was in a state of existential anguish, because he also had heard recently of the death of a puppeteer friend in Tapalpa, a rustic mountain town about two hours outside Guadalajara, reportedly for having witnessed the narco execution of his friend. Coincidentally, my friend Q and I went there that weekend to attend the art festival he was supposed to participate in, but the festival was canceled due to community grief and fear. Nothing had happened like that in the town ever, one of the men working at the tourist office told me. Through these two stories about death--one theatrical but inspired by actual events, and the other real but associated with the theater, I grew intensely aware of the need to celebrate life.
Two Thursdays ago, I attended a play called “Mujeres de Arena” (“Women of Sand”) at the Museo del Periodismo (Museum of Journalism) on Alcalde Avenue with my friends S and J. The play vividly and cruelly exposed some of the tragic issues surrounding femicide in Cuidad Juarez (According to Amnesty International more than 370 young women and girls had been murdered in the cities of Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua since 2005). Sometimes the cast of five women would wear white, as angels, showing the audience how, contrary to images of them in the press, these women (the youngest a girl of 12) hadn’t “deserved” their fate, only going about their regular business as women and doing nothing out of the ordinary. At other times, the cast would wear sinister black. There was also a curtain with light shining on it and the actresses behind it, allowing us to imagine some of the horrifying acts of rape, but, alternately, also see them in beautiful and innocent silhouette profile as lively women still alive.
The audience sat in chairs and on benches forming a circle in the museum foyer around a stripped-down stage level. Incense burned and lamps created an eery atmosphere and much doubt about what was actually happening on stage (exacerbated by the huge columns in our line of vision). Although the drama played in several theatres in the city (most were free entrance), this performance was dedicated to a 28-yr-old Guadalajara actress who had recently suffered a brain hemorrhage and was fighting for her own life at the Hospital Civil. My friend J, an actor and puppeteer, who knows her well, was in a state of existential anguish, because he also had heard recently of the death of a puppeteer friend in Tapalpa, a rustic mountain town about two hours outside Guadalajara, reportedly for having witnessed the narco execution of his friend. Coincidentally, my friend Q and I went there that weekend to attend the art festival he was supposed to participate in, but the festival was canceled due to community grief and fear. Nothing had happened like that in the town ever, one of the men working at the tourist office told me. Through these two stories about death--one theatrical but inspired by actual events, and the other real but associated with the theater, I grew intensely aware of the need to celebrate life.
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| Usually peaceful Tapalpa, about 2 hours from Guadalajara |
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| Calaveras de chocolate en el Parque Morelos |
On Friday I continued to explore Day of the Dead celebrations before the holiday, walking down to Parque Morelos, where Pedro, the maintenance man at our rental property, suggested I go to see all the adornments being sold for tombs: sugar or chocolate calaveras, toy coffins with papier-mâché puppets ready to pop out, miniature food offerings for the dead (I bought a clay pot with shellacked corn kernels and one red chile, as well as a chocolate skull with freaky, electric frosting eyes) and skeleton figures, the female ones called Catrinas. Catrina, the name for an elegantly dressed woman from the Belle Epoque era, was conceptualized by the graphic artist José Guadalupe Posada at the end of the 19th-century (in fact, the city of Guadalajara funded a street art project that lined the downtown streets with Catrinas dressed up for different functions (Hawaiian Catrina, Hemp Catrina, Tai Chi Catrina, etc).
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| Hemp Catrina on Juarez Avenida |
After the market I kept on trucking, down to the Panteón de Belén, the oldest cemetery in Guadalajara. I had wanted to get tickets to the nocturnal ghost tour, but those were sold out. Meanwhile, I was glad (and relieved?) to join the less scary 2pm tour. This cemetery has been closed for a long time, open only for tours. There were no mourners or visitors of graves. The graves and mausoleums were left in ruins and visitors were told not to climb the stairs up to the grander mausoleums or even put their feet beyond the barrier of the chain keeping them off the grass for fear of scorpions ready to feed (true?).
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| Panteón de Belén |
We heard stories of the Vampire Tree (who took root through the heart of a vampire, who would, if the tree were uprooted one day, seek his revenge on the entire city) and saw the tombstones of the famous, rich people of Guadalajara past.
Of even more cultural interest to me was the Panteón de Tlaquepaque (a nearby municipio, just a train ride away from downtown Guadalajara), which my conversation partner Saúl and I visited last Sunday just before heading to an altar competition at the Centro Cultural Refugio in that same town, and the Panteón de Mezquitan, which S and I visited last Tuesday, the actual Day of the Dead. Yellow or golden marigolds (called zempasúchitl in Nahuatl) which mark a pathway to the altar, reigned in both these cemeteries where people still bury their beloved and visit them around this time of the year to nourish them (materially and spiritually). Some interesting sights caught my attention: men selling water to wash the graves, graves with elaborate arrangements of marigold petals (which didn’t seem to move in spite of the wind) as well as offerings of food, coke or water, cards and mariachi groups wandering about the grounds (I heard them playing but didn’t see anyone hire them out, though I’m certain it was happening). S and I were reassured to see a few families sitting around a tombstone, laughing and telling stories. This scene of human warmth served as a counterbalance to the stories of death I'd heard over the week (I had been puzzling over the death of 15 recovering drug addicts who were executed at the Tepic carwash, and stunned at the news that the group of men from the auto repair shop who'd disappeared while on vacation in September had been found, buried in a case of mistaken identity). The cheer and light of marigolds and multicolored papel picado, or cut out tissue paper, seemed to go a long way to lift spirits.
Of even more cultural interest to me was the Panteón de Tlaquepaque (a nearby municipio, just a train ride away from downtown Guadalajara), which my conversation partner Saúl and I visited last Sunday just before heading to an altar competition at the Centro Cultural Refugio in that same town, and the Panteón de Mezquitan, which S and I visited last Tuesday, the actual Day of the Dead. Yellow or golden marigolds (called zempasúchitl in Nahuatl) which mark a pathway to the altar, reigned in both these cemeteries where people still bury their beloved and visit them around this time of the year to nourish them (materially and spiritually). Some interesting sights caught my attention: men selling water to wash the graves, graves with elaborate arrangements of marigold petals (which didn’t seem to move in spite of the wind) as well as offerings of food, coke or water, cards and mariachi groups wandering about the grounds (I heard them playing but didn’t see anyone hire them out, though I’m certain it was happening). S and I were reassured to see a few families sitting around a tombstone, laughing and telling stories. This scene of human warmth served as a counterbalance to the stories of death I'd heard over the week (I had been puzzling over the death of 15 recovering drug addicts who were executed at the Tepic carwash, and stunned at the news that the group of men from the auto repair shop who'd disappeared while on vacation in September had been found, buried in a case of mistaken identity). The cheer and light of marigolds and multicolored papel picado, or cut out tissue paper, seemed to go a long way to lift spirits.
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| Panteón de Mezquitan, downtown Guadalajara |
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