translated from Spanish: It look cheerful, but it smells of death! Happy day of the dead

photograph / Naomi Morelia, Michoacan.-today, in Morelia and in every corner of the country, the living come to remember the dead. From early time entire families attend the cemeteries and graveyards of the city, with arrangements, food, drinks, flowers, photographs of their deceased and sometimes sneaks a another beer, all for a few hours in their graves, recalling all those moments in life that now in death they become more special.

The Municipal pantheon of Morelia, that place that the rest of the year seems abandoned by the few people who visit, but on 1 and November 2 is not supply and seems more vivid and colorful than ever. There people entered after crossing a market of food and flowers, because there is no better combination than a good taco, between the smell of the Grenache and recognized cempaxochitl flower aroma.

You people come to pass slow, between the crowd, dodging tombs and walking on the mud, which does not prevent that all arrive with flowers in hand the rest of their families.
The Morelia more small help to the largest clean the headstones and slabs; SOAP and water are the main elements. Already clean starts the arrangement, which look pretty, that look cheerful, but it smells of death!

That lack is not the band. In several tombs remain friends and relatives of the deceased, they take you music, they sing, weep you, they remind him, they miss you. Drums and guitars, may be heard while the swallows passed from hand to hand.

There, in that forgotten enclosure for months, there is everything and for all tastes: is the small old tombstone and slightly fractured with a simple offering; It can also be seen having flowers and more flowers, balloons, candles, a wreath and up to arrays of quinceanera, no matter waste, no matter the family spending, once a year that headstone that says “Fernanda” should be beautiful.
The day of the dead is a Mexican tradition, declared in 2003, masterpiece of the Oral and heritage Intangible of humanity by UNESCO.

Is curious how the Mexicans we mock death, to the extent of making it cheerful or eat it in a sweet or bread; We make verses, dress with brighter colors, because death is something normal for us, live with her and she laughed.

This is a time to remember, to delight the palate, to enliven the memory and for them, our dearly departed feel alive among us, the living.

Original source in Spanish