Death is Something Normal for Us:
Celebrating Día de los Muertos in Oaxaca, Mexico
“Death is something normal for us. When someone dies, we have to take care of everyone else. The respect that we have for the person who died should always be there.”
One holiday brings together the living and the dead in Mexican culture - Día de los Muertos. Death is not approached with sadness, but rather treated as an opportunity to honor family members who have passed and to remember the lives they led. It is celebrated annually from October 31st - November 2nd and is considered more significant than Christmas.
Left: An altar in a home displays flowers, fruits, a carved gourd illuminated by a candle, photos, and keepsakes from the family members who have passed.
It is customary for people to create altars in their homes adorned with photos of the deceased, articles of their clothing, their favorite foods, fruits, candles, and flowers. The items on the altar are displayed and are not consumed until after November 2nd.
For Luis Enrique, a teacher and tour guide from Oaxaca City, Dia de los Muertos provides an important opportunity to learn from his mother about his grandparents’ lives and visit their graves together.
Right: An altar invites the public in to view the candles, flowers, and photos, and decorations.
“I think it is really important to get to know where you come from and the history behind you and your family.”
Foods are an important part of the festivities. As a chef who was born and raised in Oaxaca, Miguel Angel Alvarez has a unique perspective on the culinary traditions around the holiday.
When Alvarez is cooking for his own family for the holiday, he makes mole negro, which is a darker and sweeter version that contains more chocolate. When cooking for others, he makes typical foods from Oaxaca City, including mole estofado, mole chinchillo, and sopa de guias - whichever foods the deceased enjoyed while alive.
Right: Alvarez shows the students in his cooking class the tomatoes, spices, bread, raisins, and sesame seeds that comprise the ingredients for mole estofado.
“Dia de los Muertos is a celebration to try to keep our people alive and remember them with joy. We offer them foods that they liked a lot so they will come and visit us because the belief is that we have to have them on our minds all the time.”
Some families honor Día de los Muertos with special foods like mole, which can be made in many different varieties and requires a lengthy, multi-stage cooking process. Making breads like pan yema or pan de muerto is also common.
Left: Moriell Greenleaf learns from a Oaxacan family about the day-long process of cooking mole coloradito using traditional methods - in a clay pot, over a fire, stirred with a stick of bamboo for hours - for their holiday meal.
Holiday traditions can vary from bigger cities to smaller towns and from region to region. In the smaller pueblas (towns), families eat special meals together, place ofrendas (offerings) at their loved ones’ graves, and perform traditional dances.
Right: Vendors at a market in San Gabriel Etla - a small town just outside Oaxaca - sell marigold flowers and jicama as locals shop to prepare for the holiday.
In 2020, the government placed restrictions on the usual festivities due to the covid-19 pandemic and very little was allowed to take place. In 2021, the street parties returned, but the usual parades were still canceled and the cemeteries were closed.
Left: Greenleaf enjoys people-watching while wearing face paint, a crown of marigolds, and a traditional dress on the crowded streets of Oaxaca Centro on the night of October 31st.
On each night of the holiday, the center of Oaxaca City turns into a big street party. Thousands of locals and tourists from all over the world walk around with their family and friends, often dressed in costume, wearing flower crowns, and with their faces painted as the calavera (skeleton) Catrina - a prominent figure in the holiday’s lore - or dressed as diablos (devils).
Costume pieces, coronas (crowns) made of both artificial and of real flowers, and professionally-done face paint are readily available from street vendors throughout Centro, welcoming everyone to participate in the fun.
Right: A reveler in an elaborate costume made of corn husks poses on the street in Centro with Greenleaf and a friend.
Enrique has fond memories of dressing up and going out to the city center to celebrate Día de los Muertos. He points out that the Disney movie, Coco, has brought increased attention to the holiday since its release in 2017.
Left: A group of diablos wearing costumes covered in jingling bells carrying and whips dance on the street while onlookers join in.
“It is a very good experience to be celebrating with friends a tradition that we own and is now exported all over the world.”
For Jorge Luis Plata, the street celebration “is unique because it’s a party for us. In the street, all the people feel the same. The sadness does not exist for us. The pain is gone and the only thing that stays in our hearts and minds is happiness for the family member that is gone. We miss the person, but only in the first days. Then we prefer to remember how we lived with them.”
Right: A woman walking through the streets of Barrio Xochimilco stops to show off her disfraz (costume).
Plata enjoys seeing visitors come to Oaxaca to experience the holiday and welcomes their participation in his culture.
Left: The author, dressed and made up as a Catrina, stands in front of a mural featuring a hummingbird. Hummingbirds are an important part of Oaxacan culture because they help to pollinate the agave plants that are used to make Mezcal.
Photo by Jorge Luis Plata
“When visitors get to know our culture, they will love it and want to participate in it. They will always be welcome to listen to our stories. And when they get to know the stories, they can carry them throughout the world, which is very good.”
Make it stand out.
While death can be a tricky subject for kids to understand, some Oaxacan parents are helping to make it easier using messages and values from their culture. As a photojournalist who covers “la nota roja” - stories of accidents, executions, and assassinations - Plata is accustomed to dealing with death. He teaches his kids “to respect death, to learn from it, and not to be scared of it because death will always be a part of life, and living in fear of death is no way to live.”
Right: A mural in Barrio Xochimilco features a Catrina figure, the skeletons of hummingbirds, and a Xoloitzcuintli dog - a native breed over 3,000 years old that was significant to the Aztecs and is believed to accompany one to their death.
Because death is approached in a non-threatening way, some Oaxacans tend to ponder their own mortality without fear. Alvarez explains that he teaches cooking classes because one of his biggest passions is sharing knowledge about traditional food so that the information will not be lost.
“That’s why I decided to go back to my roots and connect with my heritage,” he says, after having spent years traveling the world and cooking in different countries.
After he passes, he would like to be remembered for this contribution: “Maybe the goal with these classes is not to die but to stay in the heart of someone because I am reproducing the knowledge by sharing it.”
Left: In a class taught by Alvarez about pre-Hispanic contact cooking methods, Greenleaf uses a metate to grind the ingredients for mole estofado into a paste.