On the Path of Marigolds: Living Traditions of Mexico's Day of the Dead

"On the Path of Marigolds was published in 2019. Ann Murdy has spent some 20 years traveling to villages in Oaxaca, Puebla and Michoacán, photographing Day of the Dead festivities. It’s a gorgeous photography book. I also love Mary Andrade’s book —it’s beautiful—but since her last book was published 2007, I wanted to share Murdy’s book, which has more recent photos and observations. The photos are accompanied by informative essays about what’s taking place in the photos. It’s also bilingual, which is wonderful. I really appreciate books that are written both in English and Spanish. The book has won multiple awards: the 2021 Southwest Book Design Award for best photography/art book; the best bilingual book of the year award from the New Mexico Book Association; and the gold medal for best multicultural Book of the Year from the Indies Book Award. It also won an award from Latino Literacy Now’s International Latino Book Award. Before Catholic missionaries arrived, native peoples throughout Latin America had traditions of creating altars or ofrendas (“offerings”) to honor their ancestors. These rituals differed from place to place but the basic idea was the same: you must pay homage and make offerings to your ancestors if you expect to have good crops and a healthy family. These offerings took place at the end of the harvest season because if you’re going to make an altar, you need stuff to put on it. So, they’d put on all the wonderful harvest fruits and vegetables, corn, squashes, as well as flowers, candles and incense. In Mesoamerica, because of the climate, they have at least three harvest seasons per year, so pre-colonial ritual celebrations honoring the dead happened throughout the year in conjunction with various harvests. When the missionaries arrived, they were horrified by this “pagan worship” of the dead and tried to obliterate it. They forced everyone to convert to Catholicism and tried to stop pre-Christian rituals, but they couldn’t because these were so deeply ingrained in people’s worldviews. Indigenous people were still surreptitiously making altars in their homes and going to the cemetery and leaving offerings for the dead at gravesites. So, missionaries finally decided to tolerate a syncretic mixture. They said, ‘Okay, you can continue to make these altars, but they must happen on our Roman Catholic schedule of All Saints’ Day on November 1 and All Souls’ Day on November 2.’ So that’s why these traditions, which used to happen multiple times in the year, got pushed to these specific dates. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . What’s interesting—something I note in my book, and Ann Murdy also mentions in hers—is that many Latin Americans have been converting from Catholicism to fundamentalist Christianity in recent decades. For example, Guatemala was about 98% Catholic before the 1980s, when US evangelical missionaries began heavily proselytizing there, particularly in indigenous villages. According to 2020 statistics, Guatemala is roughly 40% Catholic and 40% evangelical Christian today. Evangelical Christianity is also growing in Mexico, especially in states with large indigenous populations such as Chiapas and Tabasco, which have each recently become about 35% evangelical Christian. This is significant because evangelicals don’t create Day of the Dead altars. They reject what they consider to be the “satanic” worshipping of saints, ancestors or other kinds of “idolatry.” They forbid their church members from participating in Day of the Dead celebrations. So, in some rural Mexican villages where indigenous people used to celebrate Day of the Dead, people are doing it less because of conversions to evangelical Christianity. We’ll see what’s going to happen there. If conversions keep happening at the rate they have been, will indigenous villages still celebrate Day of the Dead in 50 years? Or will rural villagers say, ‘This is too much of a money maker for us not to celebrate!’ Aside from the spiritual significance of the celebration, economically struggling villages in Mexico have benefitted from Day of the Dead tourism, which the Mexican government began actively promoting in the 1970s. My book notes examples of Mexican towns where Día de los Muertos wasn’t much celebrated previously, that have begun holding Day of the Dead events to increase tourism. Today, village celebrations last not just for two days, but for a week or even a month . Villages that didn’t previously observe the holiday with much fanfare have begun holding Día de los Muertos altar exhibitions, processions, theatrical shows or music and dance performances. Residents convert their homes into temporary lodging and restaurants, selling food and drinks to tourists who come to experience Day of the Dead. Some even charge for tourists to enter their homes and view their altars. Impoverished villagers, who may barely scrape by during most of the year, can make more money during Day of the Dead season than they might make in an entire year. So, tourism is also a factor in whether or not the celebrations will continue in rural indigenous villages. My book grapples with all of this. What does all this mean for traditions? Does it mean that they’re fake? Or does it mean that they’re still meaningful for many people? These are questions we can ask ourselves about any cultural traditions. How and why do they survive and adapt (or not)? What is the role of media? Does commercialization help or harm them? Or is there a mixture of both happening at the same time?"