Mexicans are not the only ones that have a celebration around death, our latine siblings from the Ecuador have “El día de los difuntos” Day of the Perished the same day, Japanese (Mahayana) Buddhists have the Obon or Bon festival around July or August, and Chinese people have the Qingming festival in April. However it is the Mexicans’ Día de los Muertos that has more national recognition. Part of that, I believe, is because of our geographical proximity that México has with the United States, and the U.S. (imperial) power that it has around the world. It certainly helped that (Disney) Pixar made a movie around the holiday. Let’s talk about Coco. I loved this movie when I first went to see it in theaters, however it sour a bit when I realized that all the main creative forces of the movie were white American men, and then even more when I learned that Disney wanted to trademark “Day of the Death” because of the film. I am not saying “let’s cancel Coco!” Whatever that means, rather to show a larger issue that I have not only with Day of the Death’s stories but with the traditions of non-dominant cultures and how the American media takes ownership of them. The Book of Life is another American Day of the Death movie however, this one has Mexican creative forces behind it. Jorge R. Guitérrez was the director of the film and it even had the participation of Guillermo del Toro as a producer. However it feels Spanish, with its emphasis on Toreros and the fact that there aren’t any main brown (or black) characters. Funny, how the Mexican production is more white-washed at the end, than the white-American one. Cemetery of Boys is a book by Aiden Thomas, that has the #ownvoices without the whitening initiative. It follows a trans Mexican-Cuban boy as he tries to find out what happened to the ghost boy that now is tied to him, and hijinks occur. The Day of the Death is treated as the climax of the story and a deadline adds the tension the narrative sometimes lack for a murder mystery. However, while the book represents la Santa Muerte in a good or neutral light, the ending/plot-twist sort of demonized (a little bit) Mayan beliefs. Apart from the individual problems all these stories have, a personal one that I have with the three of them is their tendency to mythicize the Day of the Death. This is not to say that el Día de los Muertos can’t be part of Fantasy but sometimes I wished for a mundane, slice-of-life, coming-of-age story in which the 2nd of November there’s a small celebration honoring the protagonist grandparents, and that’s it [Insert 500 Hundred Miles From The Sun: A Novel here]. Apart from that I would love to see other traditions/customs apart from building an Altar. We write poems: calaveritas, we sing, dance and bake pan de muerto. Teenek people (from la Huasteca) have their own variant of the celebration called the Xantolo, they were the ones that introduce the celebration into the Nahuatl language, with a special dance called “Danza del Xantolo” a.k.a. “Fiesta de las Ánimas''.” Afro-Mexican people also have their own dance called “La Danza de los Diablos” in which apart from being a way to celebrate the Day of the Death, doubles as a way to ask for aid to the “African” Black God Ruja, as well as variations of the types of ofrendas, offerings. Lastly, I love Día de los Muertos stories, my family doesn’t celebrate and the most I used to do was write a calavera for school (now I also make an altar), it was through fiction that I was able to connect with this part of my heritage. If you are Mexican, push the boundaries of how Día de los Muertos stories can look like and continue celebrating and remembering! Ari Ochoa Petzo is a Mexican-Venezuelan bi genderfluid writer. They like dancing to old music and history. In their free time you can find xem trying to coerce their friends to participate in another of their crazy projects.
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