Week 11: El Dia de los Muertos-- Then and Now

By Amanda Sneed

This Friday, November 2 was El Dia de los Muertos. All of Mexico and CEMAL joined in the celebration and festivities. We students celebrated with our families by going to the Zocalo (at the center of the city), visiting ofrendas (alters to the dead) in the city of Ocotepec, and by helping to set up ofrendas in our homes with our host families. The following my reflection on putting up the ofrenda with my host family.

El Dia de Los Muertos—Then and Now

I celebrated my first Día de los Muertos in my freshman Spanish I class. I was fourteen and hadn’t yet developed a strong aversion to the gendered label of “freshmen”. I was too focused on geometry proofs to bother with considering the social construction of gender. My Spanish class, which was right after geometry, was a welcomed refuge from the world of right angles and protractors. My first taste of El Dia de los Muertos was especially exciting in my fourteen-year-old world because it meant one glorious day with no verbs, no conjugating, and no vocabulary. On this day, we put aside our notebooks and pencils and dutifully grabbed the markers, construction paper and glitter provided by Senora Brown (bell-to-bell as she was more fondly known). As instructed, we made skulls and paper cut-outs to hang from the ceiling. Working on our creative masterpieces and talking (but mostly talking), we ate candy from black and orange packages only half noticing the ofrenda (alter) Senora Brown was constructing at the front of the room. As she called for our attention, we hurriedly shoved the last bits of Kisses chocolates and Reese’s cups into our mouths and turned our attention to the ofrenda. Our teacher explained that the ofrendas are erected to celebrate and honor the dead. She told us that the food, flowers, and photographs (like those on our make-shift classroom ofrenda) offered the gift of remembrance. All I could think of at the time was how it was wasteful to put out on the ofrenda food that “would not be eaten”.

Fast-forward six years to the present day—to last Thursday night. I am putting my brother’s picture and a miniature candied plate of fish for my uncle on the ofrenda in my house here in Mexico. Lighting the candles, I think that I should also set out an angel for my grandmother and a pack of Marbol Lights for my grandpa. Flower petals cover the whole of our ofrenda and crepe paper decorations surround this place on our front porch where we have decided to honor our dead. In total, my family sets out fifteen candles which will invite our loved ones from different countries and cultures to be remembered together. Throughout the night, I find myself troubled by how the veladoras (candles) covered in paper bearing the image of Jesus will not stay lit. I wonder if there exists any significance in the fact that the Jesus candles refuse to hold their flames. And then I start to wonder about the dogs, especially Anel, who has made a habit of illegally sneaking into the house to demand our attention, petting and admiration. Anel, I thought, would surely eat the food, sweets, flowers and probably the Jesus candles too.

Amongst such worries, I had yet to see the ofrenda. I had, of course, looked at it while we were placing the flowers and hanging up the crepe paper, but I only saw with my eyes. Fortunately, my consumption of water afforded me the opportunity to awake from sleep to see the ofrenda with more than my eyes alone. On my way to the bathroom, I was drawn in by the dimming light of the two Jesus candles which had managed to survive. I relit the less successful Jesuses, then stood to see the display before me shadowed by the moonlight and candles (three of which had somehow already managed to self-extinguish). I saw my brother and the fish and faces of my family’s loved ones smiling at me. And I started to cry. Not tears of sadness or happiness—just tears. The eatable kind that slowly make the voyage from the corners of your eyes to the corners of your mouth where they become a salty treat. I saw the ofrenda. Our ofrenda. My ofrenda. It no longer represented an enticing alternative to verb conjugation. Instead, the ofrenda before me represented the beauty and frailty which is our human experience. And so I stayed there for a while looking into the shadows—just me, the Jesuses, and our visiting dearly departed.



The following poem was written for Dolores who was murdered in Ixtlilco on Friday, November 2. Dolores’ murder was a result of ignorance and homophobia. She was a friend of CEMAL and of my host family and is dearly missed by all. Please keep her friends, family, community and her partner of more than forty years in your thoughts. I write these words because I do not know what else to do besides tell the little bit I know of Dolores’ story in hopes that such acts of hatred and injustice are not repeated.

A Dolores

I saw you in pictures only
Collared shirt, jeans, boots, sombrero
I would have thought you were male
If not for your protruding chest
Definitely female in the way it filled
Your collared shirt
I heard the stories told by my sister
With affection and laughter
I heard them told by others later
After they lowered you into the earth
I hoped to meet you
To shake your hand and see the land
Your land, her land
Which you sowed and labored
I never knew you, Dolores
But I met you there in the church and cemetery
In the crying and wailing
I felt the love they have for you
The love she has for you
They cried for you, Dolores
We cried
So that someone would hear the injustice
Which echoed the streets of Ixtlilco
That Sunday night
They killed you, Dolores
Because you couldn´t fit into the box
Because you danced on the lines
Ignorance and fear guised as violence
For which we will never have the answers
She continues and will never have the answers
And so they buried you, Dolores
Without arrest, without investigation, without media
Only the cries and metallic soprano voices linger
In the petal-covered cobblestone streets
To tell your story
To seek out justice which will not come

-Amanda Sneed