The Día de Muertos was not what I expected...
If you've seen the latest James Bond movie, Spectre, the opening scene involves a big, spooky, day of the dead parade in mexico city. This type of imagery in Hollywood is pretty common. And exciting. And completely made up.
There is nothing "spooky" about the day of the dead celebrations as far as I could tell. At least not in the Patzcuaro area where I was.
Day of the Dead is the biggest holiday on the Mexican calendar, where families and communities come together to celebrate the lives and pray for the souls of relations that have passed away.
There is a lot of skull iconography, and maybe that's where Hollywood decided it was spooky, but people with their faces painted as skulls and a big smile aren't actually very scary.
Children do something similar to "trick or treating", and I gave out many coins into the tiny baskets of dressed up skeletons when they approached me in the town square. I looked for somewhere to get my face painted, but I had left it too late, and the lines for such services were too long.
I went back out to the island of Janitzio in the early afternoon, but I left again before the sun went down...I had signed up for an English language tour of some cemeteries in little villages around the lake. It was an English speaking tour guide, a local, and a very nice bus full of English speaking tourists. We visited a small village to the west of Patzcuaro, where we were treated to a variety of traditional celebration food that I can't remember the names of. There was an elderly lady that was making hand made tortillas and cooking them over a wood fire. It was an amazing experience...unfortunately, I didn't realize there was a meal included in the tour, and I had six tacos and some soup a couple of hours earlier.
My discomfort (emotional, not gastric) began when our tour guide started telling us about the last time he saw his grandfather as a teenager, and how he thinks of him and honors him during this celebration...and there were a number of our group that were completely ignoring him and taking pictures of the ladies that had been cooking! It wasn't just the rudeness of the situation that unnerved me, but I felt like in some way the people that had prepared this great meal for us had been reduced to photo ops. As an English speaking tour, there was not a lot of communication between a lot of our group and the people we were observing. I felt that to a lot of people, there was a dehumanizing effect. The people we saw and met at the graves and at the meal were very gracious, and didn't seem to mind being photographed, but it felt strange to me...like they were put in the same category as a sunset or a beach or some ruins...these were human beings.
Anyway. I'm babbling. It was a late night, and that's my excuse. It's also my excuse for not talking more snaps.
If you've seen the latest James Bond movie, Spectre, the opening scene involves a big, spooky, day of the dead parade in mexico city. This type of imagery in Hollywood is pretty common. And exciting. And completely made up.
There is nothing "spooky" about the day of the dead celebrations as far as I could tell. At least not in the Patzcuaro area where I was.
Day of the Dead is the biggest holiday on the Mexican calendar, where families and communities come together to celebrate the lives and pray for the souls of relations that have passed away.
There is a lot of skull iconography, and maybe that's where Hollywood decided it was spooky, but people with their faces painted as skulls and a big smile aren't actually very scary.
Children do something similar to "trick or treating", and I gave out many coins into the tiny baskets of dressed up skeletons when they approached me in the town square. I looked for somewhere to get my face painted, but I had left it too late, and the lines for such services were too long.
I went back out to the island of Janitzio in the early afternoon, but I left again before the sun went down...I had signed up for an English language tour of some cemeteries in little villages around the lake. It was an English speaking tour guide, a local, and a very nice bus full of English speaking tourists. We visited a small village to the west of Patzcuaro, where we were treated to a variety of traditional celebration food that I can't remember the names of. There was an elderly lady that was making hand made tortillas and cooking them over a wood fire. It was an amazing experience...unfortunately, I didn't realize there was a meal included in the tour, and I had six tacos and some soup a couple of hours earlier.
My discomfort (emotional, not gastric) began when our tour guide started telling us about the last time he saw his grandfather as a teenager, and how he thinks of him and honors him during this celebration...and there were a number of our group that were completely ignoring him and taking pictures of the ladies that had been cooking! It wasn't just the rudeness of the situation that unnerved me, but I felt like in some way the people that had prepared this great meal for us had been reduced to photo ops. As an English speaking tour, there was not a lot of communication between a lot of our group and the people we were observing. I felt that to a lot of people, there was a dehumanizing effect. The people we saw and met at the graves and at the meal were very gracious, and didn't seem to mind being photographed, but it felt strange to me...like they were put in the same category as a sunset or a beach or some ruins...these were human beings.
Anyway. I'm babbling. It was a late night, and that's my excuse. It's also my excuse for not talking more snaps.
I know what you mean about the dehumanizing factor of taking pictures of strangers in a strange country. I personally won't do it. I mean, what is the point. I'm not a professional photographer. My pictures won't be winning a Pulitzer or end up on the cover of Life or McLeans. And I feel the act makes me appear somehow detached, a mere spectactor, a tourist, or in Mexico - a gringo!!
ReplyDeleteI don't think anybody's going to mistake me for anything other than a gringo here Jeff!
DeleteWere most of your companions on the English speaking tour Americans?
ReplyDeleteThere were a lot of Americans, but I didn't talk to all of them...not sure if they were exclusively from the US.
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