12 November 2015
This was our third Day of the Dead in Oaxaca. The first was
about twenty years ago when I came here on an accreditation visit for an
American university with a graduate program here in the Oaxaca Valley. What I
mostly remember is that Linda and I spent the night of November 1 in the
Xoxocotlán cemetery watching families share meals and talk with their departed
relatives. There was music playing. We recall a generally somber and mysterious
mood and an unseasonalbly drenching rain.
Muertos is a very distant cousin to Halloween. In Catholic
Latin America it is one of two moments in the year when society looses its
restrictions and gives itself over to excess. One of these moments, Carnival,
comes in the spring just before the planting season in the northern hemisphere.
The other, Muertos, comes just after the harvest. Both have a deep religious
significance. Carnival is the blowout before the 40-days of abstinence and
repentance that lead the faithful into Easter. Muertos is a memorial day, a day
for families to honor their ancestors and commune with their family roots.
Spirits of the deceased come to the cemeteries and expect to be visited by
their surviving relatives. People erect home altars to their dead so that the
spirits will visit them in their houses as well. Everyone knows that the
spirits like to roam the streets, often in disguise, so it is safest for the
living to be nice to everyone since they never know whom they might be talking
to. Angelitos, sprits of children who
have died before the age of intelligent conversation (say 3 years old), hover
in the air. Theologically their deaths were joyous occasions; since they died
before it was possible for them to sin, they ascended directly to Heaven.
Nowhere Is Muertos celebrated more colorfully and more
frenetically than in Mexico, with the celebrations in Oaxaca and Michoacán
sharing the top honors. The governments of both states consider the festival an
economic pump, and have poured resources into publicity and making sure there
is an array of attractive events scheduled over several hotel-filling days.
Last year Linda and I were living in the casita while our casa was under construction. On the 31st we participated
in building a communal Muertos altar in the field adjacent to Jim and Kathy’s
salad garden. On November 1 most of the action was in San Pablo’s cemetery. Every grave in the camposanto behind the San Pablo church was decked out in orange
marigolds and bright red coxcombs, and San Pablo families brought pan de muertos and bottles of mescal to
the cemetery to share with their loved ones.
On the afternoon of November
2nd we watched as a hundred neighbors in costume followed the comparsa troupe into Jim’s field. The
thirty or so members of the comparsa,
in traditional costumes (devil, bishop, bride, widow, parents of the bride,
grandparents, doctor, cowboys called guardacampos,
imps, and their retinues) performed the traditional morality play, and then danced
frenetically for an hour, taking frequent breaks for mescal, beer, and jamaica, a hibiscus-flower water-based
drink. There were tubas of course, in teeth-rattling profusion, accompanied by
trumpets, trombones, clarinets, and drums. Jim Austin (in costume), Mike
Conroy, and Bill Stetcher tended bar. Lalo, who built our house, directed the
chaos of the comparsa. Kids, costumed
like imps, their red jackets and trousers sewn with jingle bells, darted among
the dancers and the watchers like fireflies. When the well-lubricated comparsa finally staggered off, the crowd
had drifted away, and the rental chairs had been folded, we survivors repaired
to Kathy and Jim’s house for chocolate
and pan de muertos. Jim and Kathy,
who had been hosting the event for the past seventeen years, swore their
traditional “Never Again!”
Linda and I didn’t get into the city much during Muertos last
year, which was a shame, because all the businesses downtown sport Muertos
altars, as did the churches and the government offices and the Zócalo. Every
neighborhood, every school, and every communal organization fields a band and a
parade. Oaxaca State and Oaxaca City hosts events (food fairs, a book fair, a feria de artisanía, art shows, concerts,
dances, children’s activities – you name it). For a few pesos a street artist
will paint your face to look like a corpse. People gather and are entertained
in every possible urban venue and most of the street corners in the city.

This year promised to be similar, ... except . . . now Santa Cruz was fielding two
separate comparsas in addition to San
Pablo’s. Venues had to be found, schedules worked out. Collaborations (e.g.,
contributions) sought. Everything was promised to be bigger and better than the
previous year. This year November 1 fell on a Sunday, which meant that the
holiday would prolong through Monday and Tuesday, with businesses and schools
closed, and everyone cheerfully giving themselves to excess. Most of the
traffic signals were out and no one seemed to be paying attention to them
anyway.
Jim Austin announced the schedule:
# Saturday the 31st, 9:00 AM at his farm to tie
bouquets of flowers to deck the communal altar. Please bring as many flowers as
you can: big orange marigolds (cempasúchiles
– [Tagetes erecta]), red-purple coxcombs
(terciopelos [Celosia cristata]), tiny marigolds called flores de San Nicolás [Salvia officinalis], and sprays of
diminutive white nubes [Gypsophola panicolata], all of which come
into bloom conveniently during the last two weeks of October.
# Sunday at 8:00 PM, the comparsa of San Pablo at his house.
# Monday at 2:00 PM, one comparsa of Santa Cruz at his house. Pan de muertos and chocolate
and tamales to follow for the
clean-up crew.
Lalo informed us of the supplementary schedule. His Santa
Cruz comparsa would be coming to our
house at 8:00 PM on Tuesday. No, you don’t have to do anything to prepare. But
invite all your neighbors and friends.
The hats had been passed among the expat community six
weeks earlier: money for the bands, money for the drinks, and money for the
bushels of cempasúchiles and terciopelos that would be needed beyond
what experience had taught Jim the Saturday volunteers would bring. Unfortunately
the orange-yellow flores de San Nicolás
and the white nubes grow only in the
wild, so the altar assemblers would have to make do with whatever the foragers
had managed to glean.
On my Friday birdwalk Qalba and I roamed the lomas north of Santa Cruz. I saw hardly
any flores de San Nicolás among the
thorn scrub and mesquite, but here and there the slopes were dotted with nubes, already beginning to go brown
because of the lack of rain. I walked Qalba home, downed the day’s fifth cup of
coffee, and drove back to the lomas
on Calle Pípila, a dirt road that branches off Calle Indepedencia a few hundred
meters uphill from the Casa DaviLinda. In the back of the CRV, three small
garbage cans and a couple of boxes for packing with nubes. It took me an hour and a half to fill them, discounting time
to wipe the blood off my arms from the scraping thorns. I didn’t bother to pick
flores de San Nicolás on the loma: they grow in profusion all over
our yard!

Saturday morning after walking Qalba, Cynthia and I [Ah –
Cynthia. I forgot to mention her. A delightful friend of Deborah’s from
Portland who had been staying with us in the casita for a few weeks while attending Spanish classes in Oaxaca
City] went over to the farm, where Jim and some of his farm crew directed us in
the assembly of flower bundles. Kathy, it seems, had absented herself for the
weekend. She had obviously been resolute about her previous season’s avowal of
“Never again!” After a couple of hours of bunching blooms (gather a handful of nubes, thread a couple of cempasúchiles and a terciopelo, into the center, add touches of flores de San Nicolás for color, tie off, stack on the table;
repeat) Cynthia and I walked home. Cynthia went in to the city, and I collapsed
for a couple of hours. Later I drove up Pípila on my way to shop at the Bodega
Aurrerá, the Walmart subsidiary that apparently never closes. Seven cars, a
dozen gleaners, and not one single nube
or flor de San Nicolás still to be
seen!
Saturday night the San Pablo comparsa band, out on a preview tour, marched up our entrance
road—univited—and treated us to
their version of an overture. We applauded,
thanked them with a colaboración, and
bid them goodbye. They went down the entrance road, turned left at the gate,
walked up Calle Independencia, and turned into our neighbor Alan’s property,
and ran through their repertoire again. Full volume. And so forth, all the way
up past the Santa Cruz Agencia and school. We could still hear the tubas two
hours later.
Sunday evening, after watching the New England Patriots drub
yet another opponent on the TV, Cynthia and I –Linda, chary about the evening
chill, opted out—drove over to Jim’s. The rented folding chairs had been set
out on both sides of the little meadow, and the flower-decked altar glimmered
in the lights that had been strung from poles. Fruits, vegetables, figurines,
candy skulls, and photographs of Jim and Kathy’s ancestors and our recently
departed good friends, dotted the altar. Copal
incense burned in a brazier, mixing with the scent of marigolds and salvia. Jim,
not in costume, readied the table of drinks. Right at 8:00 (¡astounding!) the
evening breeze brought the first oompahs of the distant tuba-escorted comparsa to the crowd. As they drew closer up the dirt road we made
out trumpets, trombones, and the whine of clarinets. The comparsa turned in through the flowered arch and in a moment we
were overrun with the Hoards of Hades: devils and demons, zombies and imps, a
gorilla or two, and a scythe-wielding figure of Death, escorting the
traditional major players. Monsters swirling, leaping, prancing, dancing with
each other, dragging members of the watching crowd into the melee,

the band
blaring, no one flagging, even though it was clear that they had been dancing
for hours up and down the village’s streets and that the imps were fueled by
adrenaline and most of the adult dancers were half in the bag.
The retinue of the lead players included a dozen or so gorgeous
young ladies, slutty in their come-hither masks, their jutting bosoms, their
fishnet stockings, and elegant boots. All men of course—the comparsas in San Pablo and Santa Cruz
are only men—and all clearly relishing their alter egos in drag. The very
alluring novia, the bride in the
morality play, pulled me into the maelstrom and we danced —a cross between a
Texas 2-step and a high-school sock hop from the late 1950s—for what seemed
like a half hour but must have been six or seven minutes. Then my lungs gave
out, and I panted back to my seat to the whispered kudos of the bearded gents
behind the bar.
After a bit, but without interrupting the frenzied dancing,
the traditional play was played. The bride and groom were lovey, the groom fell
mortally ill, the doctors and the bishop offered assistance to the body and the
spirit, the devils and personifications of death tried to drag the groom away
while the cowboys, the guardacampos,
tried to stave them off (lots of running, shrieking, wrestling, cracking of
whips, sprawling in the dirt). In due course the old folks—the parents or
grandparents of the beleaguered couple—negotiate an exchange of the old man’s
life for the groom’s, so that the couple can be married. Lalo tells me that
they have rehearsed it for months, but the whole show gets lost in the hubbub.
The players mumble to each other in a circle, there is no projection, no clear
flow of action, and ... quite remark

ably, no one seems to care. Everyone knows
what is happening—it happens every year in the same chaotic incommunicable
way—so the spectator community doesn’t have to hear or even see it. The noise
and energy and frenetic dancing are enough in and of themselves. As Cynthia
wrote to her friends back in the States, “It's dreamlike or nightmarish -
whichever atmosphere suits your holiday spirit!”
After another half hour of dancing,
three women —one of them Cynthia— take baskets filled with candies out into the
swirling throng and toss handfuls of candies out over the dancers. They are
intended for the kiddy-imps, but it seems that absolutely everyone craves
chili-flavored lollipops, fruity hard candies, chocolate covered marshmallows,
and rainbow colored chewing gum, so what up until now had been mere melee
degenerates into roller derby without rails. Triumphant tail wagging imps hold
their prizes aloft for their drag-queen fathers and their grandparents on the
folding chairs to admire.
Finally one of the trumpets gives a
loud blast, and the costumed throng, their camp followers, and most of the
spectators surge toward the gate and down the dirt road into the night. The
last we hear of them, of course, is a few faint oompahs on the wind.
It isn’t until that moment that I
realize that no one has set off any fireworks! How can that be? Can the spirits
find the
boom sizzle blast of the skyrockets annoying? Did Jim put a kibosh on pyrotechnics? Remind
me to look into this.
Monday afternoon, this time in bright
sunlight, we repeat the whole scene at Jim’s with the Santa Cruz comparsa. This time they showed up an
hour and a half after the announced time. But the band made up for it picking
up the tempo and the dancers by redoubling their expenditure of energy. For what
seemed like hours!
After they had gone, after the last
wisps of tuba had faded into comforting silence, Jim and Kathy’s employees,
twenty or so folks from the expat community and a number of their Mexican
neighbors, take what is left of their energy into Jim’s house —Kathy is still
traveling— for pan de muertos and hot
chocolate. There is mescal, too, and beer, but the chocolate seems to be the
most popular drink. Gradually the adrenaline ebbs, there is a long communal
sigh of relief, and after a couple of hours the party breaks up.
But wait, there is more!
What on earth are Linda and I going to
do when Lalo’s Santa Cruz comparsa
visits our house at 8:00 Tuesday evening? We’ve sent email announcements to all
our friends, in fact, to the entire expat community. And we’ve posted signs
around the neighborhood, and invited the numerous folks I regularly meet when
walking Qalba. After several conversations with our Mexican neighbors and our
veteran expat friends, it is clear that Lalo’s assuring “No, you don’t have to
do anything at all,” was specious. At minimum the comparsa and its camp followers will expect chocolate and pan de muertos. And a basket of candy
for the kids. And some kind of foodstuffs for the friends and neighbors who
will have come to see the comparsa perform.
And . . .
We have made a family Muertos altar on
the porch. Big portraits of great-grandparents Shulman. Assorted senior Gitlitzes.
Bill Stetcher. Valerie. A few of the appropriate flowers, but not
many: the whole property is resplendent in sunflowers and flores de San Nicolás. The altar may not be elegant, but it is heartfelt.
We miss those folks, and are pleased to have them here with us.
Emma Solís will come with her mom,
doña Carmen, to help make the chocolate. I buy the necessary supplies. We buy pan de muertos. And a half dozen 3-liter
bottles of soft drink. And make several gallons of hibiscus-flavored jamaica. The drill – according to
Emma—is to watch for the comparsa and
its followers coming up the road and then,
after estimating the number, add the appropriate amount of expensive powdered
chocolate to the already boiling water. Cynthia and I yank out enough flowers
on the slope between the casa and the
casita to free up a space for the
guests. We set up a drinks table. We’re ready.
No we’re not. Yikes!, it is going to
be dark and we don’t have any illumination for the designated theater. We turn on
all the house lights. They show off the inside but don’t do much for the
outside. I hang a power light from the mango tree. We get out our flashlights. Damn,
one of the batteries has lost its charge. We plug it in.
6:45. Everything is ready for 8:00. Emma
and doña Carmen sit down for a rest. Qalba paces: something is up. The phone
rings. It’s Lalo: the comparsa will
show up in fifteen minutes.
“But you said .... but ... we’ve
invited people for 8:00!”
“Well, yes, but, .... We’ll be there
in fifteen minutes.”
“Can’t you ...?” Too late. The air
brings the sound of tubas.
In they come, up the road, through the
portón, through the aisle of
sunflowers toward the casita. Band
first; costumed players; retinue of imps and drag-babes. Camp followers. The
power light sways in the wind, intermittently illuminating a small section of
bare ground between a pile of gravel and a large clump of flores de San Nicolás. The comparsa
mills around. The dancing starts. There isn’t enough room for chaos, so the
dancers have shuffle in a tight circle, counter-clockwise.
The
tubas oompah, the trumpets and trombones blare, the clarinets squeak. We have
no guests.
Lalo tells me that no one in the comparsa has gone to bed yet. Since
Sunday! That may explain the lack of structure to the music they are playing in
several keys and at least three separate tempos. Emma has brought out the
chocolate and pan. It disappears as
fast as she can bring it out. I hold my flashlight high. The dancing —by now
more like trudging,— lacks, shall we say, verve. Cynthia tosses candy. The imps
burrow in among the tall yellow flowers and the clumps of flores de San Nicolás that separate the drive road from our compost
pits. There are no guests.
The comparsa foreman hits me up for a colaboración, which, despite the fact that we already contributed
both through Jim and directly through Lalo when the whole plan was initially
launched, I take from my wallet and put into his hand. The music slows. A
trumpet gives a weak bleat ... and
the dancers march down the road through the portón
and on to the next venue, a neighbor’s house just up the road. Emma and doña
Carmen and Cynthia and Linda and I begin moving food remnants back into the
house. We’ll get the paper and plastic cups and the candy wrappers tomorrow in
the daylight. As we sink into our chairs, exhausted, a car pulls up the
driveway. Melinda Hansen and Sharon, one of her houseguests.
“Where is the comparsa?”
“Oh, Melinda, it’s a long story. ...”
The post mortem: it’s clear that Linda
and I misunderstood what was happening. The comparsa
wasn’t going to perform at our house, just stop by. They stop by lots of
houses, so the neighbors felt no compunction to drop by, and besides, everybody
was pooped. The comparsa’s visit
wasn’t—except perhaps to us—special. Our expat friends, as exhausted as we by
three days of non-stop Muertos hoohah, could barely utter two words in
sequence, let alone schlep off to another dance-a-thon, and knew we’d
understand. Under similar circumstances, we, too, would have wilted and stayed
home.
And conclusion number two: though
Linda and I had been flirting with volunteering to take over the hosting
tradition from Jim and Kathy, we had not thought it through. It is now patently
clear that our gorgeous, large property does not have enough level ground to make
Casa DaviLinda a feasible Muertos-central.
Alas. Sort of.