Celebrating the dead

Celebrating life through death: Costumed participants in a Day of The Dead parade in Mexico City last week. — Bloomberg

OVER the past weeks, I have witnessed how Mexicans celebrated the season of their most important holiday, the Día de Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, mostly in Mexico City where I have been staying, but also in Colima, San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, and, on Nov 2 – the date when the holiday officially falls – in the pueblo (community) of Mixquic.

Holidays are feasts for the senses, and Día de Muertos does not disappoint with the manifold calaveras (skulls), the brilliant and fragrant cempasúchil (marigold flowers), and the colourful ofrendas (offerings) that families and institutions alike put up to honour and remember their beloved and highly esteemed persons. (Back home in Manila, the Mexican Embassy’s ofrenda pays tribute to the sculptor Vicente Rojo, whose geometric figures adorn Mexico City.)

The annual Day of the Dead is celebrated with colourful altars, or ofrendas, to remember departed loved ones in Mexico. — AP