Dia de Meurtos in Oaxaca
Last week comprised a whole week of festive events for the Day of the Dead celebration. There was a full slate of daily events, including neighborhood processions (Comparsas), street fairs, concerts, and museum displays. And don't forget the daily fireworks at all hours! Before we moved here, we asked what to expect during this week and were told simply, "chaos". Luckily, we live about 30 minutes' walk from the center of the city, so it was relatively calm in our neighborhood, and we could easily walk to activities when we wanted to. In the days leading up to the main events, businesses started to decorate with stings of marigolds, paper mâché skeletons, skulls and lights.
On Friday evening we caught one of the two major Comparsas, which happened to be on the same street as our Spanish lesson meeting point (a coffee shop) and it started just after our lesson wrapped up at 6pm. The only downfall of the evening parade was it made it hard to see some of the details on the great costumes. The highlights of this parade for me were the giant skeletons and the fun music by multiple bands, which made you want to dance a little on the sidewalk.
On Sunday we signed up for a group hiking tour that concluded at a village cemetery and street fair. While most communities clean and adorn their family gravesites with flowers earlier in the week, this community located about 1 hour from Oaxaca de Juarez (San Antonino) is one that supplies most of the flowers for the rest of the city. So they celebrate later than everyone else. It's tradition to decorate graves with marigolds and a burgundy-colored flower called cockscomb. It was truly an amazing sight to see the entire cemetery awash in such vibrant colors. We wanted to be respectful of the families visiting their loved ones, so I only have one photo of the cemetery. I will share more about our "hiking" experience in my next post.
After our tour on Sunday, we walked through the Zocalo, which is the epicenter of the celebrations, with two stages for concerts, mosaic displays and sample ofrendas (alters). It was quite crowded so we didn't stay long, but we could definitely imagine what the scene must have been like on Friday and Saturday nights! It's very much a party atmosphere, completed with multiple face painting stations.
I am by no means an expert in Dia de Muertos culture and tradition. These are simply my limited observations and experiences. If you would like to learn more, I suggest you do your own research using reputable sources.
Comments