Dia de Los Muertos 2021: How are We Honoring Our Loved Ones This Year?
By: Cassandra Solis
Image: from National Museum of Mexican Art @explorenmma on Instagram
Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) takes place at the beginning of November every year and is a celebration, particularly for the people in Mexico and Central America and their descendants. It is a day reserved for celebrating the lives of those dearly departed family members, and welcoming their return from the spirit world through an altar. This day is often conflated with Halloween based on the timing of the year, but it is very different.
Dia de los Muertos is a celebration of life rooted in indigenous populations (Aztec, Maya, Olmec, Zapotec, Mixtec, P’urhépecha, and Totonac) of the region that honored their dearly departed by creating altars with images of the deceased, as well as their favorite foods, drinks, and activities. According to anthropologist Dr. Arturo Oliveros Morales, the first celebration started in small towns in Michoacan (where my paternal family is from) around 1500 B.C. In Mexico and other parts of Central America, relatives of the deceased will gather at cemeteries with altars (ofrendas) that often have popular elements of the day, like skulls (calaveras) and marigolds (cempasúchitl).
From Cempasuchil to Calacas: What are the important aspects of an altar?
All altars are different, but some aspects of an altar have very traditional and salient meanings. Altars or ofrendas in a very literal translation mean an offering, and the Dia de Los Muertos is at its core an offering to our dearly departed. It is on these ofrendas that we are able to share the many ways we remember our deceased loved ones. Your grandpa loved to play poker? Put a deck of cards on the altar. Your mother loved to sew, add a needle and thread to your ofrenda in her honor.
The beauty of ofrendas is that they change depending on the traditions your family practices and how you best want to honor those who are no longer with you. The beauty of these colorful offerings is that they can be as complex, elaborate, or ornate as you’d like, and there isn’t necessarily a rule book for how to “properly” create an ofrenda as long as your intention and offerings are there. Resources look different for everyone, so sometimes a photo, cup of water, & candle suffice! There are some common cultural artifacts that you will see on many ofrendas that I would like to walk you through.
Ofrendas include the four main elements of nature/life: wind, water, earth, and fire:
Earth
Sugar Skulls (Calaveras)
The sugar skulls (calaveras) are probably some of the most prominent modern day images of Dia De Los Muertos, but their significance is quite traditional. They symbolize those who have passed from this world to the spirit world. Due to colonization, Spanish and Italian missionaries brought sugar and the practice of sugar art with them from Europe to Mexico and Latin America. These regions were rich in sugar cane production due to the creation of plantations. Because various regions celebrate differently, in some Mexican states, like Chihuahua, skulls are frowned upon, so you probably wouldn’t see a skull on their ofrendas.
Bread (Pan de Muertos) & Food/Beer
Pan de Muertos, a very specific type of bread made around Dia De Los Muertos, is baked with a cross in the center to symbolize the four directions of the universe in the pre-Columbian beliefs. The four points were ruled by the Aztec gods Quetzalcóatl, Tláloc, Xipe Tútec and Tezcatlipoca. The circular structure of the bread represents the circle of life and death. The inclusion of food/harvest at an altar represents the element of earth. It is common practice to include a deceased loved one's favorite food, drink, or beer of choice at an altar for them to enjoy as they return to us in this world.
Marigolds (Cempasúchitl)
Marigolds symbolize an important part to any altar (ofrenda) and symbolize the earth. This flower, native to Mexico, is bright orange and the blooms help attract souls to the altar. The petals are often used as a pathway for souls to follow from the spirit world to their cemeteries or altars.
Fire
Candles (Velas)
Candles symbolize fire. Every lit candle represents a soul. Often an extra candle is placed for a forgotten soul.
Copal
The word copal comes from the Náhuatl word “copalli,” which means “incense”. The burning of copal symbolizes the transition from the physical world to the spirit world. It is also used in many traditional ceremonies for its cleansing properties, which is why it is used at altars as a purifier of the environment, and allows for spirits to safely return to the altars/homes.
Water
Water (Agua)
Water is placed on an altar to quench the thirst of the deceased as they return from their trip from the spirit world. It welcomes them back to the land of the living.
Wind
Tissue Paper (Papel Picado)
Papel picado represents the element of wind, and plays an important role in the altar . It is used to add color to the altars and bring in the aspect of celebration. Some say that the various colors of the papel as well as the images on them have particular symbolism or meaning. Some also say that the thinness of paper symbolizes the fragility of life.
Celebrating Life Amongst (Preventable) Mass Death
When thinking about how I wanted to present this sacred practice in Beloved’s blog, I thought about submerging the reader in the history of the celebration, the indigenous ties, and the importance of the altar, and leaving it at that. However, after more careful thought, I realized that this Dia De los Muertos is unlike every year's celebration. Last year’s Dia de Los Muertos and this year’s have a lot in common: COVID-19. After 19 months of one of the most deadly pandemics of our lifetimes, where COVID-19 disproportionately ravaged communities of color, it is safe to say that this year’s Dia de los Muertos celebration is particularly heavy and nuanced.
As a BIPOC woman, I've known my whole life that racism is a public health crisis, but the COVID-19 pandemic finally forced public health officials and doctors to declare social and racial injustice and inequity as a public health emergency.
Source: CDC
In 2020 alone, we were able to see the ways in which COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations disproportionately impacted communities of color. According to the Yale School of Medicine ,“the percentage of Black and Hispanic patients hospitalized for COVID-19 exceeded the percentage of Black and Hispanic population in the states that were surveyed over a two month period. This disparity was most prominent in Virginia, where Hispanic individuals make up 9.6 percent of the state’s population but accounted for 36.2 percent of all COVID-19 hospitalizations. Taking this a step further from hospitalizations to death, the CDC, as of September 2021 states that COVID-19 related death is 2.0x more likely for Black or African American, Non-Hispanic persons compared to to White, Non-Hispanic persons, and 2.3x more likely for Hispanic or Latino persons compared to White, Non-Hispanic persons.
I mention this because while many U.S Americans may feel like this pandemic is over or has subsided as they and their families have received their vaccines, traveled for the first time in months, or “gone back to normal”---a phrase I have heard so often in this last year and a half and quite frankly despise-- for many of us, this pandemic is still ravaging our communities as it has been for the last 19 months. In October 2021, we continue to bury our families, friends, and community at alarming rates from a disease that has largely been spread through the negligence of this country’s poor political leadership and a selfish population that sees mask mandates as a modern new form of political repression.
So while this Dia de Los Muertos is still very much a celebration of life, our traditions, and our community, it does feel particularly heavy and quite frankly difficult to mourn these monumental and preventable losses to our community. It begs the question--how does one celebrate life AND mourn the losses, losses that are still happening now (get vaccinated, for real), when much of the rest of the world has returned to “normal”? I don’t have an answer to this question, but I know I will build my altar this year with this nuance in mind: to celebrate the lives I and so many have lost this year and to celebrate our resilience.
I’d like to leave you with a quote from Mexican Poet, Octavio Paz who states:
“The opposition between life and death was not so absolute to the ancient Mexicans as it is to us. Life extended into death, and visa versa. Death was not the natural end of life but one phase of an infinite cycle. Life, death and resurrection were stages of a cosmic process which repeated itself continuously. 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.”