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Day of the Dead celebrations

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PUERTO VALLARTA, MEXICO. This year’s Day of the Dead celebrations in Puerto Vallarta were especially colorful. There was an exposition of 6 feet tall Calavera Catrinas (the well known lady with the big hat associated with Day of the Dead) along the street in front of the old downtown Mercado and a big street party with Charros and fireworks.

Dia de los Muertos or Day of the dead is not connected or a part of Halloween, while the theme and the decorations are similar with skeletons and the traditional orange and black colors. Dia de Los Muertos begins after midnight on the night of October 31^st and November 1^st. The true Days of the Dead are November 1^st & 2^nd or All Saints and All Souls Day. The celebration actually predates the Spanish conquest of Mexico, and the dates were different, when the Catholic Church began to take over Mexico, they “reorganized” the celebration by matching it to the Catholic Holidays of All Saints and All Souls days, but the indigenous influence is still very easy to see.

This year in Puerto Vallarta there is a contest to make the best Calavera Catrina with models and many girls dressed up as Catrina and were seen walking the streets to the contests and parties.
Many businesses and families set up altars to the dead in their homes, as well visiting the graveyards to clean and decorate the graves of family or friends. There are often families having picnic, musicians wondering around and it is a happy festive time to celebrate the lives of those who are no longer with us.

Included in these altars are ofrendas, offerings of the favorite foods and drinks of the departed, to be enjoyed by their spirits when they return to visit their living family. A typical altar is laden with bright orange marigolds (the zempoalxochitl, flower of the dead) and mota, a deep purple velvety flower, and is lighted with a multitude of candles.

Traditionally, the altar is lighted on the evening of the 31st to await the arrival of the dead children, los angelitos. At twilight on November 1st until dawn of the 2nd, the altar is again lighted and this time the vigil is for the departed adults.

This is a time of happy communion with the dead, not a time of sorrow. Nobel Prize winner, Octavio Paz, in his essay, "The Labyrinth of Solitude" explores the Mexican fascination with the duality of life and death. "Our relations with death are intimate," Paz writes, "more intimate perhaps than those of any other people."

He further described this celebration as an escape from the difficulties of every day existence – not only the poverty, but also a kind of blackness in the soul which perhaps has its roots in the joining of two antagonistic groups, the Indian and the Spanish. Whatever the reason, this Mexican fiesta is a full-blooded affair, colorful, highly emotional and it lasts for days.