Vista Latina: Day of the Dead is an evolving, nuanced holiday

Long thought to help the dearly departed on their journey through the underworld, the personalized items that decorate an altar or gravesite on Dia de los Muertos can be as varied as the personalities they are supposed to aid.

Decorations can be photos, flowers, toys, as well as a favorite dish, drink or liquor.

In essence, Dia de los Muertos is an acknowledgement of an individual’s duality and offers an opportunity to reconcile life and death in a personalized way.

“In order for us to recognize life, we have to acknowledge death,” said Alberto López Pulido, an ethnic studies and sociology professor at the University of San Diego. “We understand and are sensitive to our duality.”

Dating back to pre-Columbian Mexico, Dia de los Muertos has its origins in indigenous people’s notions that the spirits of the dead returned to their gravesites to mingle with the living. The decorations serve as familiar landmarks and sustenance that would aid the deceased. 

A mixture of indigenous, Catholic and Latin American traditions, Dia de los Muertos allows for the active engagement of individuals who want their spiritual practices to contain some “substance.”  

“As Latinos we tend to personalize so many things in our lives based on our experiences,” Pulido said. “(Life and death) are not abstract theories.”

For many Mexican families, Dia de los Muertos is a time when much thought and reverence are paid to those who have preceded them in death.

“We are on the same journey,” Pulido said. “You embrace it. Their fate is your fate.”

The holiday also incorporates the use of small poems called “calaveras,” which literally translates as skulls.

The use of stylized skeletons is also seen as a way to promote social commentary in the public sphere, said Antonieta Mercado, a communications studies professor at the University of San Diego.

The cartoonish skeletons that are highly visible during the holiday were first introduced by Mexican cartoonist Jose Guadalupe Posada in the late 1880s. A critic of the dictatorship of Mexican President Porforio Diaz, Posada would use skeletons in artwork that would satirize social conditions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Since then his art has been closely associated with Dia de los Muertos and reproduced by artists with a similar activist streak that continues to this day.

“It helps people with limited access to the public sphere,” Mercado said. “Their voices are heard through art.”

Setting up altars in public places also serves to bring the community together to socialize.

The holiday’s spiritual significance and its social critiques are starting to find more adherents stateside as certain groups of people, such as Chicano activists, recognize their importance.

Dia de los Muertos traditions also seem to be merging with Halloween-type components in the U.S. as well, Mercado said.

Yet the holiday is not exclusive to Mexico, but found throughout Latin America, where different traditions all belie the same sort of principles about life and death, Mercado said, noting that “there is no such thing as purity” when it comes to ancient cultural traditions. 

“Everybody adds their own take,” Mercado said. “Tradition is always changing.”

Staff Writer, Copy Editor Julio Morales can be reached at 760-337-3415 or at jmorales@ivpressonline.com

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