Breathe
By Veka Duncan
At this time of the year it is common to hear that the Day of the Dead festivity has a pre-Hispanic origin, attributed to the ancient cult of death that prevailed throughout the peoples of Mesoamerica. While it is true that the inhabitants of ancient Mexico venerated mortuary deities and established complex funerary practices, the reality is that the Day of the Dead, as we celebrate it today, has an important European heritage.
Some time ago, historian and anthropologist Elsa Malvido demonstrated that the indigenous genealogy of the Day of the Dead was largely a narrative construction created during post-revolutionary Mexico, aligned with a political and cultural project that rejected the foreign in order to exalt a nationalist discourse. The intellectual world of that time, focused on socially committed and militant communist creation, was in charge of rooting this notion through painting, cinema and literature. In his view, the indigenous was synonymous with the oppressed people - workers and peasants - while the European - and Spanish, in particular - represented, through colonialism, the exploitation of capital. Needless to say, in this interpretation of history, pre-Hispanic Mexico was seen as a sort of socialist utopia. From then on, skulls began to populate Diego Rivera's murals and Sergei Eisenstein's films.
If the Day of the Dead is not, then, strictly attributable to the pre-Hispanic world, what were the bases that allowed this myth to settle in our imaginary? The truth is that the cult of death did indeed exist among the indigenous peoples and even, thanks to the chronicles written by the Spanish conquistadors, we know that some of the festivities in which this cult was expressed took place at the time of the year in which we celebrate our dead today. In the Mexica ritual calendar, for example, starting in the rainy season and throughout the autumn, various festivities and rituals were held that alluded to death, some dedicated to Huitzilopochtli, their titular god and lord of war, as well as the Miccailhuitontli and Micaílhuitl, festivals of the dead and of the little dead, respectively.
The coincidence of these dates with the Catholic dates of All Souls' Day and All Saints' Day, as well as Halloween - of Celtic origin - is not fortuitous: it is probable that all of them have an agricultural origin, since autumn is the harvest season and the beginning of a cold and infertile period, symbolically it is when the earth dies. Despite the geographical differences, both Europe and Mexico are in the northern hemisphere, so the agricultural calendars of both sides of the world coincide.
With the Conquest, first military and then spiritual, new funeral rites and mortuary beliefs arrived in these territories. With them, a new ritual and religious calendar, now Catholic, was also established. November 1 was dedicated to All Saints, that is, to those who did not have a date to remember them, and November 2 was defined as the Day of the Faithful Departed, established due to the massive losses caused by the bubonic plague. On this date, it was also customary to go to the temples throughout the night to obtain indulgence for their souls, a notion that became more relevant after the establishment of purgatory; in this way, the relatives of the deceased prayed for their souls to avoid this being their destiny.
In New Spain this generated a new tradition: street vending outside the temples during the night when the masses of the Fieles Difuntos were held - since then it is clear that Mexicans make a party out of everything. This continued strongly during the 19th century, as narrated by the chroniclers of the time, such as Ignacio Manuel Altamirano and Antonio García Cubas, who already stated that alfeñique skulls were sold in the portals of the Zócalo on these dates as an imitation of the relics (bones, mainly) that were presented to commemorate All Saints' Day. This sweet, by the way, arrived to our territory by Arab influence, being a candy that took root in Spain through its contact with the Middle East.
There is still much to be said about the diverse and global origins of what today we call Day of the Dead, but at least for now this button remains to demonstrate that although it is not a festivity that comes strictly from ancient Mexico, it is undoubtedly deeply Mexican, the result of that rich hybrid culture that characterizes us.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
Comments ()