The Days of the Dead

"This book has really beautiful photos and is less text-heavy than my first choice. It has photos of contemporary Day of the Dead altars in rural Mexican villages. It also has scenes of the marketplaces where people go to buy items for their altars, as well as photos of cemeteries and people going to church. It shows a lot more of the day-to-day activities of celebrating the holiday and is another very good background book. It also discusses pre-Columbian rituals and the differing ways that altars are done in various regions of Mexico. I like that it is written bilingually. Every page is printed in half Spanish and half English. Given Disney’s long history of offensive stereotyping of ethnic cultures, I was surprised at how well Coco turned out. There’s a backstory to that, which I discuss in my book, which is that they started out doing a very poor job. The original animatic (a clip composed of sections of the early storyboard set to music) which Disney had created to depict the initial direction of the story, illustrated a complete misunderstanding of what the celebration was . The images looked almost like Carnaval, with acrobats jumping around and a casino nightclub scene set to calypso music and Caribbean drumbeats. The imagery didn’t reflect Mexican indigenous values or aesthetics at all. Then Disney tried to trademark the term ‘El Día de los Muertos’ (which is what they wanted to name the movie) and it became a huge fight with the US Chicano community. The community won and Disney backed down. At the time, Disney had almost no Latinos involved in making the film at a senior level, which is shocking, but they did have a Mexican American animator on staff, who Disney executives then turned to for advice. He not only showed them where they were off, but also had wonderful ideas for developing realistic characters and plotlines. He was promoted to co-director and insisted on bringing in other Chicanos to consult on the film. He also made sure that Disney showed clips of the movie along the way to Chicano artists and the larger Mexican American community to get feedback. That’s how it became such a good film. In the end, it became a model for how you should do this kind of film – soliciting community input and feedback. Did they get everything right? No. One thing I’ve heard people complain about is the scene where the souls are crossing the border into the land of the dead. The film imitates the US border crossing, with Immigration and Border Patrol agents rejecting certain people who are trying to cross the border. There might have been a more sensitive way to depict that. Another thing is the inaccurate portrayals of alebrijes in the film. Alebrijes are fantastical animal creatures created by Mexican artisan Pedro Linares in the 1930s, when he had a fever dream. He and his family and other local artisans in Oaxaca began creating colorfully painted carvings based on his fevered visions of these whimsical creatures and they became very popular. There is now a large craft industry in Oaxaca making alebrijes. They’re beautiful but they’re a modern creation. In Coco , alebrijes are said to be indigenous “spirit guides” that accompany souls to the land of the dead. This is not true. Alebrijes originally had nothing to do with Day of the Dead. The film gives the impression that they have always been part of indigenous death culture. They have no mythological meaning in relation to Day of the Dead but, thanks to the film, people will erroneously believe that they do. However, by and large, I think Coco is a really nice way to introduce children and adults to the holiday’s meaning because it does a good job of showing that the celebration is about love for your family and the importance of remembering deceased loved ones, and that as long as you remember them, they won’t really be dead. That’s a beautiful message. I love the celebration. It’s such an interesting, beautiful and fun way to think about the dead or death . In mainstream US culture, we don’t have a joyous way to honor the deceased, but they mean so much to us. Even when they’re physically gone, they’re still a big part of our lives. One thing that my book talks about is how Americans have taken to the celebration, making little altars in their homes, and getting into the idea of remembering deceased loved ones in a special way each year. It’s so much fun to make a Day of the Dead altar! If you ever want to do one with your kids, you can make one displaying your parents’ photos and little mementos—like if your dad liked to play the harmonica or your mother liked to knit, you’d put those items on the altar, along with their favorite foods, flowers and other decorative items. Then you can light candles and tell stories about them. It’s a beautiful ritual to do with children, to help them learn about their family history and keep the memory of deceased loved ones alive. There are many parts of the world where similar types of ritual offerings for the dead are done, especially around harvest time. For example, in Ancient Egypt, there were offerings to Osiris, god of the dead, who was also god of the harvest. You also find similar rites in Africa and Asia. So, this is actually a common form of ritual remembrance throughout many parts of the world. But when I researched this subject, I focused on Latin American customs. My own book deals with the Day of the Dead as it is observed in the United States, where it was first initiated as the public festival we know today by Mexican Americans in 1972. In the 1970s, in the US and many other countries, it was a time of social movements and political activism. Here in the US, there was the Black civil rights movement , the American Indian movement, the women’s rights movement and the anti-war movement, for example. A lot of social change was going on at that time. Ethnic and racial groups who had for generations lived in the United States as stigmatized minorities were sick of being made to feel that they were second-class citizens vis-à-vis the dominant Anglo-American population. They had been told for so long to assimilate in order to become “real” Americans, almost made to feel ashamed of their ethnic heritage. When immigrant families arrived in the US, many Anglicized their names and dropped their ethnic traditions or native languages. That changed when a lot of young Americans in the 1970s travelled back to their ancestral countries – such as Mexico – to rediscover cultural rituals they may not have grown up with. The term Chicano is a self-identifying term used by Mexican Americans who are politically active in civil rights and other social justice issues. The Chicano Movement in the US had roots in the 1930s but really took off in the 1970s. It is still going on today. It emerged to fight the racism that was happening in the US Southwest and California, where people of Mexican ancestry faced segregation in schools, housing, employment, restaurants, et cetera, as well as harassment and violence from the dominant Anglo population. The Chicano Movement was a political movement to fight for equal rights, but it was also a cultural movement that wanted to proudly reclaim Mexican identity. Celebrating the Day of the Dead in the US was very much part of that, and my book Day of the Dead in the USA discusses this process. Many Chicanos travelled to study the traditions of southern Mexico, such as ancient weaving practices, altar making, Aztec art and dance, and they brought these traditions back with them to California."