On the occasion of Mexico’s Day of the Dead, a festive and colourful bank holiday where the living celebrate their dead, women have a singular place in the celebrations. Two feminine and emblematic figures link Mexicans to death: la Calavera and la Llorana.
Patrick Bard, a French photographer and writer, who has just published a book of photographs on Mexico’s Day of the Dead, entitled “Calaveras, la mort joyeuse” (Calaveras, the joyful death), underlines this predominant place of women in the world of the dead in Mexico. “In pre-Hispanic Mexico, the Aztec world, a warrior who died in battle and a woman who died in childbirth enjoyed the same prestige and were on an equal footing. The Aztecs believed that there were three regions where the dead lived. The most coveted was obviously an equivalent of our paradise. Warriors killed in battle or sacrificed and women who died in childbirth went straight there because paradise was located in the sky. They escorted the sun there.
The emblematic figure that connects Mexicans with death is a woman: the Calavera, personified by the very popular figure of the Catrina or Calavera Garbancera, who was born in 1912 under the imaginative pencil of José Guadalupe Posada, a caricaturist who drew her in the form of a skeleton wearing a veiled hat. It was an immediate success. The character soon became a popular figure, soon to be taken up and declined in many variations by the artists of the 1920s, led by Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.
Another emblematic female figure from pre-Hispanic myths was the Llorona (the weeping woman). She presents herself as the grieving soul of a woman who has lost or killed her children, searching for them in the night by a river or lake, frightening those who hear her piercing cries of pain and crying tears of blood. Taken up and amplified in contemporary Mexico, it embodies both the suffering and the revenge of women victims of violence”.
This celebration resonates with the current events of the year 2020, when Mexican women demonstrated against violence and feminicide on 9 March. An unprecedented strike for this country of Central America.
Aztec and Catholic traditions
The Day of the Dead or Dia de los muertos, in Spanish, is the most important traditional festival in the country. It has been classified as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO since 2003. This celebration unites the pagan rites of the Aztecs with the traditions of the Spanish colonists and is celebrated on 1 and 2 November, under the Christian influence of the dates of All Saints’ Day and the commemoration of the dead. It is on this occasion that Mexicans meet and celebrate their ancestors. Families then set up altars in their homes and place offerings on them. Flowers, food, fruit, sweets, whole dishes and drinks are prepared to please the deceased, whose souls return to earth on this special date.
The celebrations are varied. Mexicans dress up in costumes, cars are decorated for the occasion and parades are held in the streets with music. Families also go to the cemeteries to eat, dance and sing. But this year, the Day of the Dead will be less festive. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Mexicans cannot visit cemeteries this time. They have been closed to prevent a further increase in the number of Covid-19 cases. However, this government decision will not prevent Mexicans from setting up altars in their homes and celebrating their dead with dignity.
Credit: Photograph from the book “Calaveras, la mort joyeuse” by Patrick Bard
