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Growing up in western Mexico, Griselda Vargas’ early memories of the Day of the Dead holiday involve a home altar laden with marigolds, candles, a variety of dishes, and a special sweet bread.
The food and fragrant, yellow flowers surrounded photographs of deceased loved ones whose divine return was eagerly awaited during a days-long ritual punctuated by prayers, laughter, and music. Too young to understand the complexities of a centuries-old tradition, Vargas patiently kept her eye on the altar’s rainbow of sugar skulls that made her mouth water in anticipation.
“When you’re a child, you’re just waiting to eat the candy skulls,” she says. Food is central to the Day of the Dead celebration. Mole, pronounced MOH-lay, tamales, rice, posole, sweet pumpkin, and the bread of the dead, pan de muerto, are typical edibles found on altars and dinner tables. Families also personalize the altars to entice the deceased back to earth with dishes and drinks once favored in life.
Out of respect for the dead, no one at Vargas’ home would touch the food until after the departed had savored it. Family and neighbors prayed together and placed flowers on graves in the nearby cemetery, certain in their belief that although no longer in physical form, the dead briefly dwelled among the living again. Back at home, everyone shared the meal prepared earlier and remembered the departed with anecdotes. “It was a very festive time,” Vargas recalls.
The native of Jalisco state now lives in Tucson, but her hamlet still observes Dia de los Muertos much as it did in her childhood. Indeed, late October ushers in the annual extravaganza throughout Mexico with the predominant sight of artsy skulls grinning and decorated skeletons, some life-size, mimicking daily life as they eat, cook, work, and play.
The merrymaking associated with the observance can baffle those unfamiliar with a culture whose view of death may seem peculiar. In his book Labyrinth of Solitude, the Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz wrote:
“The Mexican … is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it; it is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love. True, there is perhaps as much fear in his attitude as in that of others, but at least death is not hidden away: he looks at it face to face, with impatience, disdain or irony.”
The Day of the Dead dates to a 16th century blending of indigenous rituals and European Christian beliefs. Unable to stamp out the local customs, Spanish conquerors who arrived in what is now Mexico shifted them to coincide with the Catholic celebrations of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.
The observance in modern Mexico actually involves more than one day, and mainly revolves around Nov. 1 and 2. The first day honors children and the second, adults. Celebrations vary from state to state and can last longer in rural areas and regions with strong indigenous influence where ancient traditions hold deep cultural meaning. In many places, families spend the night at cemeteries eating traditional foods such as tamales, chiles rellenos, and enchiladas next to the scrubbed-clean graves of relatives. Tequila, hot chocolate, and corn-based atole, are choice drinks.
In the northern region, residents more recently began to mark the holiday in greater, more visible numbers, largely because of migration from southern states and rural areas of the country.
In the border town of Nogales, Sonora, across from Arizona, it wasn’t until about 30 years ago that Luz Amelia Gonzalez’s family-run bakery started baking the bread of the dead, an integral part of altars.
“People who had moved here from the south would come in and ask if we had the bread,” she recalls. “So we looked into how it was made and then we started baking it.”
Juan Pedro López, who bakes a massive amount of the special bread at Gonzalez’s La Espiga de Oro bakery every year, says he remembers only a handful of places in town that offered it before his employer did. The bread, usually round and topped with sugary decorations that represent bones, now abounds in bakeries, grocery stores, and food stands.
Each year, a growing number of schools in Nogales incorporate Day of the Dead altars as an educational tool to teach students about their heritage. It’s partly in growing recognition of the observance and partly to minimize the influence of Halloween just over the border, Gonzalez says.
“The Day of the Dead is not to scare, or to be sad,” she explains. “On the contrary, it’s a day to celebrate and remember the life of people who have died.”
As October wanes, a convoy of trucks packed with freshly cut marigolds, wreaths, and harvest fruit makes its way to the town’s cemeteries. Parked along the streets leading to the final resting place of many, the trucks join a legion of vendors offering oranges, roasted corn on the cob, sugar cane, carne asada tacos, and numerous other wares to those visiting the graves of loved ones.
The revelry resembles a carnival. Crammed in between tombs, many border families indulge in Sonoran-style red posole and corn tamales. Champurrado, a thick drink made of corn flour and chocolate, often accompanies the bread of the dead, which most eat as dessert.
Families reminisce about the deceased and some sing along with roaming musicians late into the night. Entrepreneurial-minded youths, bucket and broom in hand, make a few pesos cleaning tombs.
“It definitely has grown, as more and more people who believe in the custom have moved to Nogales over the years,” López says of Day of the Dead celebration.
Similarly, the holiday tradition—or parts of it—has spread north across the U.S.-Mexico border.
In Tucson, Vargas keeps alive the observance through her Mexican bakery in Barrio Hollywood. A few days before Dia de los Muertos, customers start arriving at El Rio Bakery at West Speedway and Grande Avenue to pick up the bread of the dead that bakers Daniel Mendoza and Mario Leyva shape into form.
“There’s high demand for it,” she says. “We also deliver to grocery stores, restaurants, and schools.”
And each year, the bakery adds more schools to its list of customers.
Vargas and her husband, Guillermo, bought the bakery a few years ago from Sabino Gomez and his wife, Artemisa, who had established it in 1971. The original owners didn’t start selling the bread of the dead until the mid-1970s, when schools and walk-in customers began asking for it.
“At first we were making small quantities, but by the time we left the bakery, the pan de muerto was very popular,” Gomez recalls.
The number of Mexican bakeries in Tucson has risen since El Rio opened, and most have incorporated the bread of the dead into their array of baked goods. Not all offer Mexico’s ubiquitous sugar skulls that Vargas coveted as a child, but many do.
At El Rio, which also offers Jalisco-style food, bakers Mendoza and Leyva are accustomed to making the sweet bread of the dead. Although they don’t reveal all the ingredients, some bakers flavor the treat with anise and orange-blossom water. Other variations use ground cinnamon, sesame seeds, lemon zest, or orange juice.
Year after year, Leyva and Mendoza prepare huge batches of dough in a hot work area. Standing before a large table not far from a big oven, the men mold and punch dough into round loaves and doll-like figures lying flat on their backs. They banter while a radio blares Spanish music in the background. They then place them on baking sheets and load them into a fermentation cabinet. Lastly, they top the bread with dough “bones” and, after baking it, brush a bit of butter on it and roll it in an orange glaze.
The main baker is Mendoza, and Leyva helps out during busy times. Leyva used to bake the Day of the Dead bread at La Espiga de Oro in Nogales, working with Gonzalez’s late father, Manuel González. He remembers marking the observance by taking flowers to the graves of relatives there.
Mendoza grew up in the city of Tapachula, in the southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas. The Day of the Dead back home is considered one of the most important holidays, he says. Cemeteries overflow with flowers, families set up altars in their homes, and singing children in costumes knock on doors asking for pumpkin candy.
Like Leyva, Mendoza also got his start as a baker in Mexico. In Tapachula, he learned to make the bread in the form of round loaves and figures that he calls monitos, which symbolize a deceased person.
“Schools have competitions and the best monito wins,” Mendoza says.
For his boss, Guillermo Vargas, preparations for the Day of the Dead in Zapotiltic, the Jalisco town where he was born, began early.
“People go clean the graves about eight days before, and on Nov. 1 and 2 they light votive candles on graves and pray for the deceased,” he says. “The cemeteries are very crowded.”
In Ameca, another Jalisco town where he lived for some years, the custom was to create a communal altar outside a particular home that all residents in the neighborhood could embellish with photos and offerings. He later moved to Guadalajara, Mexico’s second-largest city. There, “many people mostly just take flowers to the cemetery,” he says. “And people always sell bread of the dead at church entrances.”
Griselda Vargas hopes to revive her family tradition of building an altar in Tucson, like the one her family and neighbors used to take turns setting up in their homes to celebrate the holiday together. She wants to put it in the bakery, and an image of her late father, José Villa, to take center stage. The cheese enchiladas and sweet pumpkin he loved will be close. Right next to the requisite bread of the dead. ✜
El Rio Bakery. 901 N. Grande Ave. 520.624.4996.
Lourdes Medrano is a Tucson writer who covers stories on both sides of the Arizona-Mexico border. Follow her on Twitter: @_lourdesmedrano.
~:Banda Calaca:~ is a community memorial altar rooted in the Mexican Day of the Dead tradition. This installation, created by Tucson artist Hank Tusinski, is a large-scale, 15-piece skeleton band marching atop a platform and beneath a circus tent top. Says Tusinski, who has spent 15 years focusing on the Day of the Dead, “The altar is a place to reflect and connect—with our lives and those who have gone before us, and influenced our own sense of self and place.” Visit the Tucson Museum of Art from Sept. 26 – Jan. 3 to see an exhibition of Tusinski’s work, and learn more on the Tucson Museum of Art’s website.
Also called an ofrenda, or offering, the altar is built to ease the journey of departed souls back to this world. It can be simple or elaborate, with two tiers or more, and typically includes:
A photo of the deceased.
The bread of the dead, pan de muerto, which is a symbol of those who have died.
Skulls made of sugar or nonedible materials to symbolize death and the afterlife.
Favorite foods of those who have died, including drinks and fruits of the season.
Personal objects that once belonged to loved ones, such as a book.
Candles, marigolds, and copal incense to welcome and guide the temporary return of the departed.
Paper banners, or papel picado, with skeleton and skull cut-outs in yellow and purple colors that signify the union between life and death.
A glass of water to quench the thirst of traveling souls.
Salt, a purifying element.
A cross and other religious figures.
Making mole and pan de muerto is a complex undertaking. It takes a lot of time and requires many steps. Do not attempt to make these dishes by yourself, in a day. It is meant to be a celebration, shared by family and friends, a time to remember those who are no longer with us. Spend the time together—cooking, laughing, learning, tasting, and sharing stories. Love and remembrance are ingredients that are essential to this wonderful tradition.