In Mexico, as in other parts of Latin America and the world, special days are set aside annually to honor the dead. This observance, which dates from pre-Columbian times, has become known as El Dia de los Muertos, The Day of the Dead. While it is an occasion to honor with ceremony and respect those who have passed away, the observance also focuses on the cycles of fertility and future life.
According to Carl Satorius (Mexico about 1850), the contemporary celebration is the result of a merger of ancient Indian (most likely Toltecan) beliefs, practices, and imagery with the Roman Catholic observances of All Saints' Day (November 1) and All Souls' Day (November 2). Many believe that this is the time when those who have passed away are allowed to return to earth to visit with family and friends, and this belief is graphically represented in offerings of food items, toys, art, and artifacts. Even in sophisticated Mexico City, mannequins in store windows are turned into skeletons, still attired in the latest in fashionable apparel; bakeries and candy stores display breads and candies in the shape of skulls; elaborate altars are constructed in restaurants, homes, and workplaces; and little movable toy skeletons proliferate.
The death motif has been used extensively since the pre-Columbian era. Stone skeletons were carved on temples and statues, and skulls finely inlaid with turquoise and gold were used as ritual artifacts. Although at first this may appear to be somewhat macabre, an exploration into the Mexican worldview, in which life is seen as being inextricably bound with death, makes this frequent representation understandable. Death and life were believed to be no more than two sides of the same reality.
The concepts of death and resurrection are fused into a view of the eternal cycle of life. This is a result of four hundred years of interaction between the indigenous cultures of the New World and Old World customs, particularly from Spanish Catholicism.
The syncretic history of the custom
At the time of the Spanish conquest, the Aztecs, led by Montezuma, were in power in Mexico. In the course of their own military triumphs, the Aztecs either forced their gods upon those whom they conquered or adopted the deities of their new subjects. This did not appear to be difficult, for the gods were similar in their attributes. This flexibility was to later serve the Indians when confronted with proselytization by Catholic priests who accompanied Hernan Cortes and the Spanish conquistadors.
For the ancient Aztecs, the opposition between life and death was not absolute, as Octavio Paz illuminates in her The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life extended into death, and vice versa. Death was not the natural end of life but one phase of an infinite cycle. Life had no higher function than to flow into death, its opposite and complement; and death, in turn, was not an end in itself: man fed the insatiable hunger of life with his death.
In Aztec times, this concept led to human sacrifice, through which man could appease the gods, and in turn nourish the cosmic and social life of the group. This idea was in radical opposition to Christian thought. For the Aztecs, the universe, not the individual, was given life by the blood and death
...
Read Full Article
|
