EL DIA DE LOS MUERTOS

In Mexico it often seems as if every day is a fiesta.  The only question is, is today a big fiesta or a little fiesta or a super-sized grande with extra cheese and tortillas fiesta, or a little fiesta leading up to or winding down from a Super-sized grande fiesta.

El Dia de los Muertos is definitely the super-sized grande variety which technically begins on October 31st when family and friends build altars (called ofrendas, literally "offerings") for the deceased, Los Muertos.  On the altars they place flowers--bright orange marigolds mostly-- and votive candles.  Often times there is a photo of a deceased family member--husband, wife, son, daughter--and some beloved or symbolic token of the dead (perhaps a favorite piece or jewelry or, in my case, a USC sweatshirt).  Most importantl;y, however, they adorn the altar with food and beverages, for this night is the one opportunity each year that the spirits of the dead can return and indulge in earthly mortal pleasures.  "Earthly pleasures" are ambiguously defined, but the altars are generally laden with fruits, nuts, and sometimes even hot dishes and a shot, if not an entire bottle, of mezcal, an amber-colored liquor that is sometimes called "El Oro de Oaxaca" (The Gold of Oaxaca).  On the other hand, I did not see any gift certificates from Victoria's Secret (or the Mexican equivalent) or 50 yard line seats to the Rose Bowl (or a bullfight). I did see one altar stacked with six different types of beer.  However, the cans were empty, leaving me to wonder about the status of the deceased and who among his amigos was acting as the designated driver?  Then again, come sunrise, it was all moot anyway.

A colleague at work told me that Dia de Los Muertos is a two-faced maiden, an inventive mixture of indigenous and Catholic traditions, of reverent irreverence.  So if I sound a little tongue-in-cheek remember that I'm just keeping with the spirit of one of those maiden faces which was summarized very aptly in a glossy tourist pamphlet outlining the many local Dia de Los Muertos activities.  On the cover is a picture of a skeleton standing on a table in a bar mooning the customers.  In addition to its bony backside, the skeleton is also flashing a big, toothy smile.  And how do we know for certain that the skeleton is mooning us?  Because a pair of panties (or a g-string--these skeletons, undressed, can look quite unisex) is hanging around its ankles.

To the tourists this is all fun and games, a slap-stick dance with the dead.  To the locals--at least many of them--it is serious business.  If you invite the spirits of the dead for an evening and wine and dine them, they cannot pester you for another year.  I suppose you could call this a kind of Death Insurance.  IHowever, if you neglect your duty and fail to adequatley host the deceased, they have license to haunt and torment you via your dreams, troubled sleep, a bad run of luck, or worse.

The action starts over a week in advance with fireworks thundering at midnight, processionals in the streets, concerts, plays, and dances at the various plazas, parks, and the zocalo (the town square).  In the stores you see ceramic and wooden skeletons in creative and/or compromising poses; skeletons of animals, coffee mugs in the shape of skulls, skeletons in evening gowns, in pirate costumes, a skeleton bride in a wedding dress sitting on a bench next to her tuxedoed skeleton groom. There are intricately carved wooden skeletons and shiny ceramic renditions.  There are statues of devils with horns and lascivious smiles chasing she-devils with flaming red breasts.

But all of these events are appetizers leading up to the main course, served up succulently on October 31st when marigolds (so bright, so orange!) seem to magically apppear everywhere:  petals polka-dotting the streets and sidewalks, strands festooning the shops and markets.  Ofrendas are omnipresent as well, and the smell of incense burning:  in the hotels, the restaurants, the markets, the shops, the schools, the homes.  Workers start heading home about 2:00 PM and shop owners begin locking up for the night.

For us the evening begins at 7:30 PM when we hear a loud commotion approaching from the Zocalo.  We rush from our apartment to the Santo Domingo plaza where hundreds of people are loosely gathered beneath the towering twin checkered domes of the ancient temple--young couples with their arms draped around each other, small packs of tourists jabbering in English, Mexican families,  local artisans trying to make a final sale.  It is a perfect evening, clear, cool but not cold, no moon and a zillion stars breeding overhead.

The street lamps are not lit tonight.  Instead, two parallel rows of luminarias are burning along the length of Macedonio Alcala--yellow flames flickering inside brown paper bags, literally thousands of them, creating a spooky orange and wonderfully Halloweenish glow, although this in no way should be confused with or called a "Mexican Halloween."

We look down the street and see it coming:  a veritable river of black, rippling, swaying, bobbing, swirling, led by a giant spinning white ball with COMPARSA 2005 printed in black and a pair of small but vigorous little legs working hard underneath.  There is a five piece band---two trumpets, a tuba, and a couple of drums, small in number but very impassioned, and very loud--followed by an entourage of red devils with horns and pitch forks and a small army on stilts:  young men and women black tuxes and suits, funeral attire, one wearing a jaguar mask, another the head of a boar.  The rest have their faces painted like skulls, with hideously happy skeleton smiles. They move on their sticks with a kind of gangly grace, like bizarre creatures in a Star Wars movie.  The rest of the river is draped in black capes and shawls, some with hoods, their faces painted like skeletons, others with blotches of fake  blood on their chests.  It could be a mob storming the Bastille, given all the frenzied energy, but this is a benevolent pilgrimage, more inthe spirit of mardi gras.  But as the black river approaches, the spectators in the street either join the flow or clear out of the way:  tonight no will, force, or power is damming this moveable homage to the dead.

We choose to join the flow, for awhile at least, as the bells of Santo Domingo toll--loud, deep, authoritative--summoing the dead. The processional will continue to the park at El Llanjo and meander through several neighborhoods, stopping periodically to amuse the crowd or dignitaries watching from the balconies (mock jousts, devils pitchforking a walking corpse).   We cheat and take a short-cut, cross a busy boulevard, and pick up the never-ending trail of the luminarias on the other side.  They leads us into a narrow alley with an old stone street that slopes down and around, disappearing into apparent oblivion, like the River Styx.  There are no cars, no lights save the little flames of the luminarias twisting inside the paper bags, spookily, not the hope and joy of Christmas but the seductive mystery of death, a different kind of beckoning:  come, follow me. . .

And so we do.  A few windows are profaned by Halloween decor--black cats and jack-o-lanterns--but most bear the macabre dignity pof Los Muertos:  votive candles, marigolds, the inimitable smell of incense.  On the other side of the stone wall rock music is blasting loudly, trying to either wake up the dead or scare them off.  We round the dark bend and see an open door leading to a small patio where a man is sitting in a wooden chair keeping silent vigil over his ofrenda, lit by two votive candles.  On the floor, two more candles are burning, and incense is smouldering in an ash tray.  He motions for us to enter.  It looks and feels strange at first, like a scene from an Ingmar Bergman film, but as we step inside the patio the sounds of the street disappear, and it feels like a small church, sacred ground. This is not like your neighborhood spook alley back in the States where the objective is to scare the bee-jeebies out of you.  Two strands of orange marigolds with a few purple highlights form an arch over the altar. The flowers are fresh, bright, fragrant.  The altar itself is terraced with three small tables arragned like steps leading to the main platform.  Strings of peanuts and little exotic fruits are draped across the front like primitive jewels.  Each level is laden with grapes, apples, oranges, bananas, a dozen varieties of nuts, big chunks of Oaxaqueno chocolate, sweet jams, candies, all nested in mounds of orange marigolds.  There are hot dishes as well--a plate of chicken with mole negro, tamales, two cups of steaming hot chocolate, and, of course, a shot glass and a bottle of mezcal.  Beside it is a human skull, yellowish-brown.  On the upper tier, top dead-center, the Virgin Mary peers out at us with doleful eyes.  She is flanked on either side by the contorted visages of long-suffering saints, and directly beneath the holy mother is a faded and wrinkled black and white photograph of a teenage boy--thick black bangs, intelligent eyes, a confident little smile, on the verge of big dreams.  On the shelf below, also dead-center, is a human skull, yellowish-brown.

We talk to the man for a bit, thank him, and then move on, following the luminarias.  We cross another busy boulevard and pass through a corridor of big leafy trees that lead us to a large flood-lit arch:  EL PANTEON DE SAN MIGUEL.  Outside, vendors in makeshift booths are selling pirated CDs for $20 pesos.  An old woman is making pancakes on a hot griddle.  Others are cooking tlayudas and tortillas or selling pecan candy treats.  There are mini carnival rides--merry-go-rounds, little spinning things with rows of blinking lights.

A large crowd is funneling through the arch and into the pantheon, a very large cemetery, very old school.  The interior walls consist of little niches like mailslots stacked from the floor to the ceiling and tonight a candle is burning in every one.  We walk quietly and carefully through the gravesite.  These are not modest little headstones but big, showy mausoleum-type tombs raised above the ground.  They are grayish white, the color of old bones, ashes.  There are giant crosses, statues of the Virgin Mary, pyramids, obelisks, space needle-looking things.  There are scriptures and aphorisms chiseled into giant slabs of stone:  RECUERDE TU FAMILIA.Some are draped with token for the dead, but most are bare.  The people meandeirng through taking digital photos are named Bob and Carol and Bill and Sue.  They wear shorts and t-shirts and hail from Minnesota and Montana.  They wear Cal and Michigan team caps.  There are very few locals here, at least until the processional finally arrives, led by the spinning white ball, the red devils, the five piece band, the army on stilts.  The mob of skeleton faces has arrived.  As the band strikes up a triumphant finale, the proxy ghosts pour into the booths, the carnival rides, the narrow streets.  And then the teenagers take over:  a group of boys in black take turns guzzling a bottle of beer; the jaguar woman removes her mask for good and puts her stilts away for the night; salsa music blasts from one CD booth and Credence Clearwater Revival from another.  The pancake lady picks up the pace, and   the tortilla lady, the tlaudya lady, all the vendors suddenly very busy.

But something seems so wrong here, so dreadfully missing.  It is only 10:30 PM, so we take a taxi out to Xoxotoclan to see the real McCoy.  Xoxo as they call it (pronounced "Ho-ho") is a small village five miles out of town where, we are told, the locals go to pay homage to the dead in the true manner of Oaxaquenos.  But the highway is like the Indy 500 tonight.  The word is out and every taxi in town is heading for Xoxo.  So are the tour buses.

We rumble down a dirt road for two miles, our driver playing chicken with a tour bus for right of way.  Fortunately, our driver wins.  He pulls down a side road, says he can't go any further:  the road is choked with taxis, cars, big blundering buses.  We get out and walk a quarter mile towards the lighted arch of the panetheon.  On the dirt and grassy plain outside are more vendors, more food booths.  Local families with blankets and sweaters are heading towards the arch like a crowd merging on a Friday night football game, except several are pushing wheelbarrows loaded with marigolds, fruit, tortillas, offerings for the dead.

We squeeze through the entrance and the first thing we notice is the smell:  the overwhelming fragrance of flowers, mixed with incense, the brisk night air, meat cooking over open fires.  It looks and feels like wall to wall people compressed between and around the graves which are decorated with marigolds, fruit, bottles of beverages, photos from younger and better days.  There are Mexican families and indigenous families.  I remember a man and a woman in their fifties sitting in folding chairs watching over a grave with quiet resignation as the hordes of tourists file by chattering with the collective hum that soounds like a giant beehive, or a soft steady explosion in the making that never fully erupts but never ceases.   I remember young children running up to us hollering, "Halloween!  Halloween!" expecting some sort of treat, and one feisty nine year old girl yanking insistently at my wife's arm.   But mostly I remember the smell:  the  sizzling meats, the pragmatic odor of campfires, and the mystery of incesne all overpowered by overwhelming fragrance of flowers.

It is not like this everywhere, I am told.  In the outlying villages the locals gather guietly at the gravesites to build their altars and keep their all-night vigils in relative solitude.  The smells are the same, but here it is serene, tranquil, reverent, holy.

But in Xoxo the tourists keep flowing by with a kind of benign curiosity.  To them (us) it is a quaint custom, a peculiar and charming festivity.  But then your eyes light on the photo of a uniformed young man, clearly from another era, framed in a mound of marigolds, and suddenly the little hunchbacked woman dutifully frying strips of chicken on the grill seems not so quaint and simplistic.  Suddenly we all appear and feel a little more vulnerable, a little more connected, and our feet tread a little more softly and cautiously between the headstones.

Just as the true menaing of Christmas is not found in the gifts, toys, lights, and tinsel, so the true heart of Dia de Los Muertos is hidden not in the parades and loud festivities but in the quiet observances of the families in their homes or at graveside--and in the theater:  drama and dance.   In the Palacio Municipal, in an old colonial style courtyard with a fountain in the middle, a troupe portrayed, via dance, LA MUERTE ATREVES DEL MUERTO, "Death through the Ages."  As purple smoke and incense poured mystically from the fountain, we watched Lady Death's dealing with primitive man, the Aztecs, the Jesuits (who showed up intheir black frocks and carried her off stage, like a corpse, the symbokic death of Death as the indigenous people knew it).  But Lady Death was not dispensed with so easily.  She returned in an elegant colonial dress, purple with a black vest and a broad-brimmed Musketeer hat, also black.  Half of her face was young, smooth, fresh, lovely, the other half was painted white, a grinning skull.  It was a beautifully haunting image, especially in the glaze of the theater lights under the starry night: the irony, dualism, and flat-out audacity of life and death occupying the same face simultaneously. 

She was joined by a dozen other young women in elegant dresses, all satin and sash, crisp, radiant colors--scarlet, emerald,gold, chartreuse--and their faces all matching Lady death's--half young, half skeletonized.  Their male partners entered in black suits and white shirts, their young faces half-skeletonized as well, and then they dance.  But this was not your genteel ballroom stuff.  This was fast and furious, skirts and coattails swirling parallel to the floor; it was tight and close, leg to leg, spinning like tops, flying apart and snapping back together again like rubber bands.  It was pulling out all the stops:  the skeletal smiles, the spinning hips, the crazy legs, the starving straight-jacketed spirits turned loose inside those young elastic unbreakbale bodies, a dirty dancing with death. And then the music stopped, and so did they.

Other dances were less vigorous but more poignant:  A young man laments that he cannot feel the rain or the wind or the warmth of his lover's lips because "Soy muerto. . ."  I am dead.  Or a dance between two young lovers who circle slowly and sinuously around one another, almost but never quite touching, never quite kissing, like the two Attican lovers permanently frozen on Keats' urn. This, while a female voice breathlessly sings the song "Besame. . ."  (Kiss me).

Love, death, and taxes.  All of this as the smoke continued pouring mysteriously from the fountain, the smell of cathedrals enveloping the woman in the black vest and the musketeer hat who comes, once again, finally, to lead the young lover away.

That presentation was a symbolic glimpse of what happens behind the scenes, or behind the veil, when the spirits are embodied on the night of October 31st.  The realist version was played out on grass and dirt hill on the south side of the Santo Domingo Temple.

There was a large ofrenda stage left, a small Aztec ruin front stage, a cemetery stage rigtht, and a big wooden cross center stage.   

The had the Aztec and indigeous dancers first, and later four tall boxy looking characters with giant white balls for heads--like the Jack in the Box mascot--and white gowns with big red crosses on the front who carry off the corpse of a young father has died while the widow and her son kneel at the cross, grieving.  grieving widow and child in black. 

Halfway throgh the program, smoke begins billowing in the graveyard where the stillness is broken by the sudden jerk of a body-corpse, followed by a series of quick, epileptic jerks and thrusts, like shock therapy.  Then another body spams, and another, until the entire cemetery is filled with jerking, quirking bodies, like a sea of fresh caught fish or salmon spawning.  Suddenly they stop, and slowly, one by one, stretch their stiff and sleepy limbs . They sit up, turn, and begin crawling slowly and laboriously out of the dark cemetery towards the lighted stage.  They claw at the ground, every inch an ironically dying effort, but gradually the corpses gain strength.  There is a bride in wedding dress with streaks of blood across her face, a groom in a tux, a priest in his frock, and a nun inher habit.  There is a belly dancer in costume, a woman in black leotards, torn and gouged.  There are street people, common people. 

They stand a moment in the full spotlight center-stage.  The band strikes up, and suddnely ---fully restored and revitalized, all of the mortal passions and desires unleashed along with their ability to enact them--they go crazy.  Dancing wildly, flirting, carousing:  the nun chases the preist desperately begging for a kiss from the fleeing priests; the belly dancer bellies up to the tuxedoed groom.  The bride mounts a unsuspecting peasant. 

Then there is silence.  They notice something--the ranks of the living who this night have come to pay homage to the dead. They are kneeling in neat rows, heads bowed, silhouettes facing the ofrenda.  The revived tiptoe through the ranks of the living, hopefully waving a hand in front of a frozen face, but there is no response as the four Jack in the Boxes with crosses quietly watch, arms folded, the guardians.  The dead continue to futilely search the ranks,  For this night at least the living and the dead seem to have exchanged places. Unable to make contact by voice or touch, the dead return to center stage, a brief momet of dismay, and then once again, they party like there's no tomorrow, which, for them, there isn't.    The bridge and groom dancing madly now, a big, energrtic swirl.  They pause to make a run at the food laden ofrenda but the Jack in the Boxes turn them away.  They make another run, and then another, and the four Jacks finally throw up their hands and walk away.  The body-spirits attack the food wildly, ravenously. There is more partying, kissing, carousing, nasty dancing.

But their time is running out.  As daylkight approaches, they once agan search the ranks of the living, frantically and  futilely, trying to make connections. And then it is time.  Some try to remain among the living and are pulled away by others.  There are a dozen changes of heart as pullers become lingerers and lingerers pullers.  There is a grand collapse center stage:  the robust life and energy slowly seeping form their bodies, as if they are inflatables and some mischievous, devious kid had poked them each with a stick pin. Their arms droop, then their heads, their legs,and they are down, out.  They begin dragging themselves back towards the cemetery, slowly, painfully:  there seems to be a price to pay for this night of fun and frolick, these life-death transitions taking a hearty toll.  The smoke starts up again, thick, heavy,  and they settle back on their graves, sitting, arms crossed, and slowly lie back down as the smoke continues swirling, enveloping, putting the dead to bed for another year.

On the other side of the stage, the living begin standing, stretching.  The band starts up and plays the tune for the Gaeuleguetza, the famous regional dance of Oaxaca.  The living begin dancing.  They run into the audience and drag spectators onto the stage. The atmosphere is joyous, festive, a most happy ending to this performance.  Then the fireworks start up--pinwheels swirling, sparks flying,  sirens screaming.  The whole south face of the temple is burning red, white and green as fireworks run wildly up and down the old stone walls.  Young and old are dancing, the music is playing, eveyrone is happy happy happy. It's a small world after all, a genuinely Disney moment ending so fittingly and perfectly, when suddenly the music stops.  The last of the fireworks sputter out, leaving a smoky aftermath.  The dancers on stage freeze. The happy go lucky tunes of the bad are replaced by the deep, ponderous bellow of a tuba and the melancholy beating of the drum matching the ominous echo of footsteps--the Grim Reaper trudging through the audience in a blood red cloak and hood, wielding his perilous sickle.  He trudges on up the grassy stage and meanders through the crowd of frozen dancers, in and out and around, searching out his next victim. The music grows heavier, deeper, deadlier as the Grim Reaper circles back again., and then exits slowly across the back of the stage, his slouching silhouette moving slowly across the stone facade of the Santo Domingo temple, merging for a brief moment with the shadow of the cross, then continuing onward to resume his never ending work, and that is how the program ends, with Death taking the final bow, always the last word.

Walking home after the performance, I'm feeling a little dizzy, a little strange. Rebecca is feeling some of the same things because she slips her hand in mine, and I have the strangest sensation--how soft it feels, and warm, and how lovely this simple but profound connection between the living that is off-limits to those who are no longer of this world, Los Muertos.  I'm thinking, what a marvellous thing this is, life, how much we take it for granted and not until that final severance truly appreciate the miracle and splendor of it all.   Life, touch, body magic. Love, death, and taxes.  And, yes, we can comfort ourselves with the thought of reunion and resurrection, but the temporary separation, however short or long, will be, well, a killer. 

The sidewalks in Oaxaca are very narrow.  You cannot walk two abreast if there is foot traffic coming from the other direction, and tonight the crowds are thick heading towards the Zocalo.  A small pack is coming our way, so we release hands and fall into single file, with me in front.  We walk this way for some time--maybe it is the after-shock of the performance or the cumulative effect of the week-long festivities, but suddenly I feel like Orpheus ascending from the Underworld, wondering if his lovely Eurydice is really truly following a step behind.  I reach back, and there is nothing.  You can't stop to look--the traffic keeps flowing and every footfall on the cracked and broken walks are hazards.  When I finally reach the corner, I stop, waiting for the signal to change as headlights speed by.  She is there, on my right shoulder.  As we start to cross, a taxi swerves mad-cap around the corner, just missing me or her or both of us, a much too close to call.  We step back, check both ways, and I take her hand again, this time holding it a little bit tighter, as if I will never ever again let go.