Regina Marchi's Reading List

"For people who don’t know much about the holiday, this is one of my favourite books. It is a wonderful way to get acquainted with it. The book is written in a very accessible way, which makes it good for both high-school students and adults. It tells the history of the holiday and discusses the ancient celebrations that took place in Mexico with the Aztecs, Olmecs and other indigenous groups. From there it goes on to show how the tradition has been observed historically throughout Mexico and how the celebrations vary regionally within the country. People today make offerings that include mixtures of both Catholic and ancient pre-Christian symbols. For example, on altars you will find pictures of Jesus or Mary or other saints. You will see religious candles, crucifixes and other Catholic iconography mixed with images of skulls and marigold flowers, which in Spanish are called flor de muerto or “flower of death.” Throughout Central America and Mexico, marigolds have been used for thousands of years to honor the dead and are still found on Day of the Dead altars today. Another thing you see on altars today is an incense called copal , which is made of pine resin. This incense was also used in Mesoamerica many hundreds of years before the arrival of Christians to the Americas, as a way to communicate with the dead. The book has beautiful pictures which illustrate these ancient rituals and how they still take place today. “It’s such an interesting, beautiful and fun way to think about the dead or death” It also has interviews with people in Mexico, including those with indigenous ancestry, who grew up at a time where their culture was looked down upon and they were told to stop doing these rituals. This holiday wasn’t always appreciated in Mexico. In the 1930s, 40s and 50s, when the government of Mexico was trying to modernise and westernise the nation, it actually encouraged indigenous populations to stop performing what urban elites considered to be superstitious and pagan rites of altar-making for the dead. These altars were mostly made by indigenous peoples in rural areas of Mexico, so the people of Mexico City and other urban centers frowned on it, considering it to be “backwards.” Indigenous children were punished in school for speaking their native languages and their families were made fun of for upholding “superstitions.” But the book also shows how views in Mexico have changed since then. In the 1970s the Mexican government did an about-face when they realized that promoting native cultures was good for tourism and for creating a unique national identity to distinguish Mexico from its former colonizers (the Spanish and French) or the United States."

"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."

"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?"

"This is an art museum catalogue that starts with a description of some of the pre-Columbian ways that Day of the Dead was observed. Then it gets into the ways it has been observed in California, when Chicanos first began to publicly celebrate the festival in the 1970s. The photos are gorgeous, and the book is written in English and Spanish, so each page allows readers to follow in the language of their choice. The book focuses on altar exhibitions at the Oakland Museum of California. These exhibitions show how the concept of remembering the dead remains strong in US Latino communities, but the ways in which they celebrate are often very different here than in Latin America. I have seen this in my own research. US altar installations are no longer simply “altars” but can be entire exhibition rooms in honor of a certain person or a political cause. Altars in Latin America are traditionally made specifically for deceased family members, but in the US, Chicanos reshaped the altar concept to also honor the “collective ancestors” of the Latino community. You see altars honoring famous people of diverse Latin American national origins, like revolutionary activist, Che Guevara, artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, or salsa singer, Celia Cruz, as a way to celebrate the contributions of Latinos to the wider world. Chicanos also created altars with political messages in honor of people who have died from preventable socio-political causes like inner city gang violence, gendered violence, inhumane work conditions and pesticide poisoning of farm workers. Most US farm workers are Latino immigrants. Day of the Dead altars in the US often raise consciousness about social injustices. In the first edition of my book, I talked a lot about US Day of the Dead altars as a form of political communication. Since then, we’ve seen altars created in memory of George Floyd and other victims of police brutality, #MeToo victims, LGBT people gunned down in mass shootings, immigrant children put in cages and dying on the US/Mexican border, and racial disparities concerning Covid deaths, so I’ve added new developments such as these to the 2022 edition of my book."