![]() His most well-known work, La Calavera Catrina, or Elegant Skull, is a 1910 zinc etching featuring a female skeleton. In Mexico’s thriving political art scene in the early 20 th century, printmaker and lithographer Jose Guadalupe Posada put the image of the calaveras or skulls and skeletal figures in his art mocking politicians, and commenting on revolutionary politics, religion and death. “They are not in opposition to one another.” The Rise of La Catrina “This kind of thing happens alongside the more intimate observation of the family altar,” says Claudio Lomnitz, an anthropologist at Columbia University and author of Death and the Idea of Mexico. Like the funny epitaphs friends of the deceased told in their homes to honor them, some wrote calaveras literarias (skulls literature)-short poems and mock epitaphs-to mock living politicians or political criticism in the press. Some started the holiday’s traditions as a form of political commentary. Elsewhere, the holiday became more secular and popularized as part of the national culture. When the Mexican Liberal Party led by Benito Juárez won the War of Reform in December 1860, the separation of church and state prevailed, but Día de Muertos remained a religious celebration for many in the rural heartland of Mexico. ![]() Honoring and communing with the dead continued throughout the turbulent 36 years that 50 governments ruled Mexico after it won its independence from Spain in 1821. Some families also include a Christian crucifix or an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico’s patron saint in the altar.įamilies decorate a relative's grave with flowers at a cemetery in Tzintzuntzan, Michoacan State, Mexico on November 1, 2015. Altars include all four elements of life: water, the food for earth, the candle for fire, and for wind, papel picado, colorful tissue paper folk art with cut out designs to stream across the altar or the wall. Clay molded sugar skulls are painted and decorated with feathers, foil and icing, with the name of the deceased written across the foreheads. Offerings of tamales, chiles, water, tequila and pan de muerto, a specific bread for the occasion, are lined up by bright orange or yellow cempasúchil flowers, marigolds, whose strong scent helps guide the souls home.Ĭopal incense, used for ceremonies back in ancient times, is lit to draw in the spirits. Families read letters and poems and tell anecdotes and jokes about the dead. Candles light photos of the deceased and items left behind. In these ceremonies, people build altars in their homes with ofrendas, offerings to their loved ones’ souls.
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