Episode 007 – What’s the story behind Day of the Dead?

[0:00:04 Speaker 0] Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. You’re listening to Latin Experts. A podcast of Latino studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Latin experts features the voices of faculty, staff and students, as well as friends and alumni of the Department of Mexican American and Latina Latino Studies. The Latino Research Institute and the Center for Mexican American Studies. Join us for this episode of Latin experts. Mhm. Very soon across Latin America, including the United States, people will be preparing their altars to our loved ones who passed for Day of the dead marigolds Calaveras, along with pictures of our loved ones looking their best and some of their favorite things while they were living. A little shot of tequila, a cigarette, a sweet treat, you name it, or at least that’s the sort of simplistic way I’ve always understood this annual ritual. But what other purposes does Day of the Dead serve for Latin American communities? To help us understand more about this important tradition, I’ve invited Dr Rachel Gonzales, associate professor in the Department of Mexican American and Latino Latino Studies, here at UT. Rachel has a PhD in folklore and ethnomusicology, and she’s incoming editor of the Journal Western folklore. She’s also author of the book Quinceanera Style. Social Belonging in Latin. X Consumer Identities, which came out last year. And, of course, she is a beloved teacher in malls, even though she’s on leave the semester. Rachel, welcome to Latin experts. Thank you for having me comin for that lovely introduction, which always sounds better when someone else reads it. So thank you. This is usually I always laughed since I started at U T. And even as a graduate student, the fall was always my busy season for speaking because people were always looking to find people to talk about being the dead. So I kind of laughed, but cool. I’m glad to be here. Well, now you’re, you know, doing the labor for your home department. And so we’re glad you’re, you know, take a little time for us here, but so I guess we just start, and I think most of us probably have the kind of understanding that I just gave in the introduction, but maybe more scholarly way. What is the basic purpose of the day of the dead and the different manifestations of it? Sure. So, David, it is actually really complex and as many of our students, possibly listening, would know deep connections both to movement. I asked for a colonialism systems of power. And so thinking about Day of the Dead is really thinking about a really compact way of understanding how particularly how Spanish European colonialism came together with indigenous beliefs and practices in the America. Right, so really broadly speaking, David dead. So even if the name Day of the Dead you know those websites, in actuality, it’s not. It’s mostly called Day of the Dead in Mexico and in the United States, in other parts of Central America and northern South America, they don’t really use the word whereto. They use the word different. So, like the part dearly departed, there’s all these sort of cultural differences, even linguistically, that tell us that the tradition is actually quite different. And so the way we know it in the United States, much like and and traditions and other diet for traditions, right, it’s actually quite unique. So when we think about David Dead sort of broadly David, that is commemorative practice. It’s about remembering and in Latin America in particular, were thinking about remembering on personal levels right. You mentioned the idea of the altar or the home or friends like the offering to the dead. And when we think about the traditions globally, it’s called ancestor worship. And depending on how you grew up, that might sound a little bit creepy. Or depending on the religious community that you were raised in or the belief that you follow it might sound very pagan. Or for some people, they even think of it as as evil, right? So there’s definitely kind of a moralistic connotations to the celebrations. But what it’s about is it’s rooted in the belief of saying that we believe in kind of a non Christian or a Christian plus after life in the idea that there are these traditions that are based on calendar customs, right on traditions about the land and harvest, but also coincide with the beliefs of sort of New Year’s new beginnings. And part of those beliefs come with understanding that as living beings, we understand the world in one particular kind of material dimension, but that all around us are there’s a whole other kind of dimensional existence, and we believe in some way that during the season of Day of the Dead right when we asked and remember our family members, we actually believe that they can come visit us. So it’s got a lot of strains, right? But the practices themselves came to the Americas with colonialism, right? So before that, the variety of indigenous populations in Mexico, Central America, northern South America before the borders were what they were the social political borders were what they were different. Indigenous populations had different ritual traditions for remembering, for honoring harvest, for thanking the gods for thinking about the relationship between the living or the material and the non material world living in the dead. But maybe, maybe better, that is material non material. But as that develops right, as the Mexican Republic developed as a different sort of political social entities, then the traditions themselves kind of got, I’d like to say, like rounded at the edges, right, they become more generalized. It becomes, um, the product of nation building. And so they have all these different strands that vary depending on where you are. But at its heart, it’s about remembering. It’s about collectively coming together to remember the past. But it’s also about celebrating life. So what? I’d like to tell people. Definitely first. David is not Halloween. David. Dead is not about dressing up in costumes and scaring people. It really is closer to a religious holiday, right where people are actually thinking about their passed loved ones in a very sincere way. But it’s not morning people used to ask me if it was. You know how, quote unquote, How is this? How Mexican the Mexican funeral like Absolutely not, but it’s definitely get confused that way. So So let’s pick up on that point a little bit, because I want to ask you about this kind of connection you mentioned or disconnection or maybe uncomfortable alliance in a way, with Christianity, particularly in Latin American countries, thinking about Catholicism, how does that tension manage? Because it does seem from what you described, that there’s obviously a lot of reasons for attention, even the term you used ancestor worship. And so so how did these tensions get managed? They just kind of get swept under the rug, and it just is what it is kind of. There’s actually a lot of different ways that people manage it, and I’d like to think that people manage it differently. People have the privilege of managing it differently, depending on on socio economic rationale, on class, on the side of resources, right? So when we think about who’s associated with David dead traditions in Latin America, particularly in Mexico, where it has a whole narrative of like cultural patrimony of the nation, it’s absolutely an indigenous tradition, right? So just like in the US, where people go, there’s a parade in San Francisco or other sort of Latin X communities, Right hosts a big public events In Mexico City, you have David dead celebrations. But you also have sort of the organic celebrations that are happening in southern Mexico and Oaxaca in areas that have larger indigenous populations in central Mexico, particularly in Michoacan, outside of the town of Patzcuaro on this island called Hannity Show, where they actually host like the official Purepecha celebrations of Day of the Dead. And so the idea is that on some level, this idea of religious syncretism is part of a cultural history of Latin America, in particular in Mexico, from where I’m speaking. So the idea there is that if you’re seen as an indigenous person or a poor person, right? This idea of blending heritage blending religious system is almost more acceptable, right? People are thinking about the ways in which oh, those people, right. There’s definitely a class race distinction that’s happening. And so people who identify as indigenous are part of current indigenous communities are absolutely still battling this idea of maintaining their cultural heritage, religious or otherwise, whether it’s religious or linguistic or material culture or dress with sort of contemporary colonialist or Western mestizo practices. Right? So you have that tension that’s ongoing, you know, hundreds of years ongoing, and it sort of fits into how people are managing. This is how we work our traditions. But we might also go to church because that’s what people have done. That’s how people survive. You become part of the mainstream and still maintain your own traditions in the U. S. Is interesting, because we have a lot more, particularly the nineties. We have a lot of migrant Latinos who are coming or becoming Latinos, migrant folks from Latin America who are coming in and converting from Catholicism to Protestantism and with Catholicism. That was a much easier Houck, right, because the idea of Roman Catholicism came into the America. That was all about syncretism, right? Blending okay, You want you have been on scene. We’ll give you the Virgin Mary or Guadalupe, right? Oh, this day is sacred to you will make it a same day and then you’re celebrating when we’re celebrating. And so there’s been this constant back and forth of we want to control you via religion. So we’re going to kind of blend and you’re going to kind of meet us halfway because otherwise will kill you. So there’s definitely this idea of, um, four syncretism right people hiding their traditions but still maintaining them right in different ways. But there’s more recent these more recent generations where people are really Protestant Christians. That idea of celebrating what’s quote unquote pagan does cause a lot more tension. And so when we think when I think about the work and the research has been done in the US, it’s really interesting to see a tradition that was very much about spirituality or talks about beliefs, particularly beliefs of the afterlife, being secularized in many ways, right? It’s been sort of removed, so you might go to your Baptist church on Sundays and Wednesdays. And whenever you have, you know, Bible study together, right? A very particular kind of schedule. But you might still go to the festival that is celebrating Day of the Dead because it’s sort of seen as a public multicultural festival, right? You might not do an altar to your family. It becomes more about an Esso racial identity, right? Being a Latino person, a lot next part of the Latin community, in the United States or in your town or in sort of a public way. So on some levels, that’s the difference. And some people like much of syncretism across the Americas. People just accept that this is what we’ve always done, and this is where we go to church. And a lot of that is based on generational relationships, right? We’re not going to disrespect what are always taught us, but we’re still card carrying Pentecostals, and it’s interesting, but it’s a kind of, um, it’s kind of like dual thinking, or it’s a kind of double consciousness right that becomes part of surviving right and not forgetting. And I think that’s actually really interesting to think about right day. The debt is both about remembering. But it’s also about not forgetting. And those two things are kind of different. Yeah, well, so I guess I wanted to Then ask you related if we’re thinking about kind of, you know, cultural syncretism and and and pass Station some of these ways that culture manifests across time and place, and you mentioned earlier about Halloween. And so I think, for not a lot of non Latinos in the United States, you know, we assume Day of the Dead is on the same day as Halloween, that it’s basically like Mexican Halloween. Is there a relationship between these two celebrations and how maybe, has that changed or manifested over the years? So there’s definitely a relationship right? And that’s clear because both Halloween and they have a dead or days of the dead, depending on how you’re saying it right. Coincide with the Catholic liturgical calendar. And that’s because we’re thinking about the impact of Christianity or Roman Catholicism that impact both indigenous America but also, you know, thinking about indigenous communities of Europe, right? Thinking about the kelp right, thinking about populations that were seen as pagan, they were also colonized and converted at the ends of a sword, right? So in Europe, right, you have Samhain, which is a Celtic pagan celebration right of October 31st. That much like David did, celebrates the end of the harvest right in sort of a gratitude period. And it’s also sort of Celtic New Year. So the idea that the celebration of that night becomes one of to think about Mardi Gras and one of the Catholic calendar and thinking about fat Tuesday versus going into the length season. If you’re a Catholic person and understand that it’s kind of a moment of a pressure release, right, it’s a big party. It’s the time to be publicly wild as you go into sort of the next phase of the year and even to thinking about Halloween. Halloween, as in the U. S. In particular as very much a kid’s consumer us up holiday that has similar functions to those original Samhain rituals, which was about inversion right when little kids can go to a stranger’s home and request goodies, right? That’s the inversion of kids don’t have that kind of power in society. But for this one night, the roles are reversed, right? And so you know we get a lot of people dressing up in ways that they wouldn’t dress up in everyday life. And we see all sorts of problematic right with that and thinking about people dressing up as other races. People quote unquote dressing in drag and being disrespectful of other people’s lives. Communities. But David Dead and Halloween. So in that way, the calendar customs David that occurs over November 1st and second, right? So just after the quote unquote Halloween holiday. But we think about, you know, October 31st and we’re thinking about the original traditions of trick or treating and, um, pagan ritual in Europe, right? We’re talking about things that also happened after midnight. Right? So we’re thinking about this timing. We’re thinking about the same sort of middle of the night celebrations. Write things that are happening by the cover of darkness, our full moon. Alright, this relationship to nature, the relationship to the time of year to the environment. And so we think about day of the Dead right, David had much like Amazon and in Europe, right days of the dead. If you look at the ways in which indigenous communities document celebrations before colonial contact to look at any of the odyssey that things like that. The idea was that there was, like a month long celebration. You know, this was this wasn’t like two days. This was a full stop to their weeks and weeks of feasting and cooking and celebrating to mark this ritual transition from gathering a fruitful harvest, thanking the gods, thanking, you know, the ancestors for the fruitful for the bounty and then moving on to sort of the fall winter season. Right where things were different. Things were different. Naturally, right. The weather changes. It gets darker sooner, right? There’s just a different kind of from that spring summer festive nous to sort of the darker winter months that were almost four more serious, right? So in that way they’re definitely celebrating their harvest festival, but they’re celebrating very similar things. But with movement with migration, with the race politics of, you know, Latinos vs Celtic Origin Europeans in the U. S. Right, those traditions, the perception changes dramatically. But David dead. So there’s a great book by Regina Martin called David and the United States. They came out about 7 8009, and she’s a very good friend. She’s at Rutgers and Communications, and she was one of the few people that I’ve ever seen right about David dead from a really honest position about how it got to the United States. So one of the things people think, and this is interesting if you talk, especially here in Texas. So we’re in Texas, which means already you can go to ATB and find the best David Dead seemed bags and ceramics and, you know, dog toys and anything you could possibly want to say. The dead sea that I love. That I didn’t grow up with that day of the dead wasn’t something that was really around in any way, besides sort of the like a museum culture history, kind of formal art structures, festivals. But it wasn’t a home tradition, and it wasn’t something you would find anywhere that wasn’t like a place that was doing like Mexican imports, right? Had a very, very sort of narrow niche in public life. But here it’s really different. But we think about where how did that it got to the US? David didn’t come to the U. S. When I think about traditions like sort of organically on the backs of migrants, right? This wasn’t something people were bringing with them, really. And in fact, I had a long conversation with my grandmother, who’s from Quote. We love to Northern Mexico, and she came into Texas when she was young to pick cotton, and so she’s a very interesting class dynamic. But remember asking if she celebrated Day of the Dead when she was a girl in Mexico and she was pretty. She got pretty defensive saying she wasn’t an Indian and we’re not gonna, you know, call grammar racist, and there’s a lot of class and race things there. But when I came to understand growing up, which I didn’t fully understand, was that David dead even in Mexico, was not something that was organically national. It was something that was seen as part of the indigenous traditions. And if we think about migration histories, right where people are coming from in Mexico is often not these indigenous areas where you know you think about Texas and having like a heavy northern Mexican natural sort of migration across the border moving north. Those traditions weren’t coming with people because people don’t have those traditions. They weren’t part of those indigenous history. So actually, in the sixties and seventies, sort of peak Chicano movement and thinking about the history of sort of the community and the discipline right? The Chicano movement, people recall, was really invested in acknowledging non European history that were being left out of what at the time of sort of Hispanic or Mexican Puerto Rican, different sort of community history, where the priority was on, you know, European origin. And so people were really actively trying to build in indigenous narrative. So in this book that Regina market rights and then the subsequent articles she produces for the Journal of American Folklore she talks about no, there was actually sort of cohorts of artists from the Bay Area from Los Angeles, right, who were invested in traveling to Mexico, particularly to Oaxaca, to learn from masters about traditions and then bring them back and bring them back to the community, right? And in many ways, the way that they sort of came in the sort of like double Diaspora. You had these artists who are saying we’re getting educated, we wanna we want people to know about their history. But in many ways they go down and and and learn from a few people, right or from a particular area. And so what we understand is like, Oh, this is This is the cultural history, baby, that is, like sort of Yes, in some way it is. But it’s also very much sort of formed as not so much a personal tradition, but a way to remember where Latino communities come from, right trying to say, like in the US it isn’t really about, like just remembering your grandmother or just remembering your cousin. It’s also about this larger building of community around the historic identity. So we just have a couple of minutes left here. But based on what you just said, I wanted to guess, See or get your expert opinion based on all that you know about how you imagine this sort of ritual or celebration serving different purposes in the future just what you just said about how even it comes to the United States or the bifurcation among Mexicans. For example, do you see this sort of maintaining or or do you see an evolution for this ritual? Well, you know, I’m always seeing evolution and that it really depends on the perception of what that quote unquote evolution is right. It’s transition will vary from community to community, right? Just like any tradition, the folks that were really invested in the religious angles and see it secularizing thinks it’s the demise of the tradition. But the tradition is changing, I think, and this is interesting, right, because this is kind of in the area of the work that I do right. I see David dead, increasingly popular in the United States as a multicultural tradition, right? So I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area, and so I go for some of the places in the U. S that has some of the first, like public day of the dead festivals and even in the early nineties, right when we would go. My mother’s a public library. The public libraries are always part of this, hosting and creating crafts and books and hosting spaces like museum spaces to educate the wider community about the celebration. Even there I you know, as a kid walking around and I mentioned this previously, there would just be open museum spaces where the exhibit formal Exhibit A lot of them were alters or Fernanda made by professional artists. Right? But then you would have community groups that could come together and build altars. And, you know, one of the first places I ever saw, like queer or lesbian art, was different. Like queer Chicano organizations that we’re building altars to like Frida Kahlo. But like Butch, Frida Kahlo and not not that they heard that Tijuana, but like her in the suit and to Gloria, Ansel Doula and to these other figures. And I was like, What is it like I didn’t under, like for me, I was like, Oh, this is very traditional, You know, David Dead is super traditional cultural practice. And then I see these twists that I would never have as a kid not assumed were traditional. And I was like, This is interesting. So this idea of art practice building things and customizing to me has always been part of this tradition, right? Because that’s what Chicana Chicano artists were doing, you know, in the sixties and seventies, they took what they understood from Mexico, brought it and made it work for the community was here, and so I think that’s more and more. What’s going on? So I mentioned a TV, my beloved seasonal section eight TB, where I’ve already rated, you know, the bags and the dryer Matt and all these things for a day in the bed from my house. But the idea that these cycles right, the sort of biologic between communities and conversations with individuals I put up a David at Ulster at my house, right to my grandparents, you know, as they passed away over the years is one of the few constants that I’ve had to graduate school, you know, bringing these people together. But I didn’t grow up having altars at home. So you know, the way personal traditions developed for different people. The idea public traditions, public traditions for day of the dead in the U. S. In particular are constantly reinventing themselves because we’re not really just talking about like an altar for Chavez, right? Some of the most interesting altars have been, you know, this is an altar to Children that have died before their birth, or migrants who died, you know, crossing right this idea of bringing political issues or, you know, queer artists, right? Just the idea of being inclusive that this is about this is about saying, Hey, look, these are quote unquote nontraditional ideas or conversations in our community, but we’re producing them in ways that they become very legible in tradition, in that way kind of changing things. And then you have a commercial angle, right? So much like other traditions. If you know you grew up in Tamaulipas or in Chihuahua, northern Mexico, where day the dead traditions and sort of indigenous or Indian quote unquote in a pejorative way. Identities weren’t part of your everyday upbringing. But you can go to that commercial section. You can go to the KGB and be like, Oh, look at Calvary to, like almost that little like shrinking and so you can be introduced to it and it can be become part of what you have at home. It can become part of a different kind of narrative. So in many ways I see yes, absolutely not. Just evolution, I would say. But this idea of responsiveness of tradition, right, well, that is. I mean, I think that’s exactly I mean, everything you just said, and I think thinking about responsiveness and thinking about going into the tradition this year is going to be a good place for us to end because we are out of time. Right? So, you know, I want to thank you so much for being here today, Rachel. Absolutely. Our guest today again is Dr Rachel Gonzales Martin of the Mexican American Latino Latino Studies Department and u T. I also want to make sure to thank the Latin Experts Collective, which is comprised of faculty and research staff and Latino studies at U. T. Also the Latino Studies Communications team and the Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services audio studio team. And, of course, thanks to all of you for listening to Latin experts. Hi. All this is Ashley Nav, um, Otero’s the communications associate Latino Studies. Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. Make sure to check out the Latino Studies Instagram page, Follow us at Latino studies ut to keep the conversation