Candy for the dead
When a family member dies in Mexico, s/he is still a family member. S/he just exists in another dimension. There are constant holidays and fiestas here – it is quite wonderful – and this one is around Halloween. I’s celebrated 10/31-11/2 on a schedule understandable only to Mexicans. Just as I can never get the opening and closing times of restaurants right, these complex holidays are in the category I call Mysteries of Mexico.
Marzipan
On one of the days, you visit your relatives in the cemetery. On that day plus another, you eat Pibe, a hearty dish prepared only for Dia de Muertos. It’s made of corn meal, chicken, beans, habanero peppers, and is heavy comfort food.
PIBE. THREE MILLION CALORIES.
BG
There are also holiday candies – looking like skulls, coffins, skeletons, and plates of food. They’re made of sugar.
In some parts of Mexico, people bring food to share with relatives in the cemetery, but they don’t do that here.
The main thing they do here is eat and drink and have parties. We went to two. Next year, I’m going to the cemetery. We brought pinatas to each of the parties we went to. They were pumpkins dressed up like witches. Quite imaginative, about three dollars each. They had some standing witches, about three feet tall, for about six dollars. Fully dressed in black, with nice hair and facial features.
A little aside: Many remains are interred in above-ground crypts. The family pays rent for this space and if they default, the remains are removed and tossed in a box in the service shack. You can help yourself if you want. And some of the crypts have no doors or containers so you just look in the opening and there are Uncle Pablo’s bones, all stacked up nicely.
A famous Mexican patriot, Felipe Carillo Puerto is buried in our cemetery, inside the same wall that is full of the bullets that killed him. And across the aisle from Felipe are the remains of his American journalist sweetie pie, Alma Reed. He was married, of course.
There is another group grave for musicians.
It’s a fascinating place. Last time I went there, I took a broken urn out of the refuse heap and it looks nice in the garden.
FLOWER TRUCK in central market
Adele at the market