My wife and I lived in Los Angeles in the 1970s and witnessed the rise of Self Help Graphics, an East L.A. His drawings of calacas and calaveras were popularized in the penny press and later incorporated into murals by acclaimed Mexican painter Diego Rivera. The great Mexican illustrator and lithographer Guadalupe Posada is credited with the popularization of imagery once employed by the Aztecs to convey deceased persons. Mexican art, which I began learning about in the early 1970s, provided me with the ideal visual interpretation of what Day of the Dead meant to the Aztec people. The SpanishĬonquistadors who arrived in the Aztec capital in 1519 found evidence of art and sculptures demonstrating that the Aztecs believed in the underworld and that ancestral gods ruled in that world. From my graduate anthropology courses at UCLA, I learned that Aztec art and artifacts suggested that their Nahualt-speaking ancestors may have practiced celebrations of the dead in the centuries before migrating to the interior of Mexico where they founded the Aztec capital. My personal introduction to Dia de Los Muertos occurred in the 1970s as I began to cultivate an interest in Mexican and Chicano art. suburbs - to appreciate the Indigenous worldview that accompanies the day.” That may explain my late appreciation of this colorful holiday. I think we were too assimilated - too citified in the L.A. In a recent essay on this topic, Martinez wrote: “Like many Mexican American families, we held on to some Mexican holiday traditions - tamales at Christmas, buñuelos at New Year’s…But Día de Muertos? Not in our house. ![]() As I wondered why this was the case, I found a good explanation in the words of Los Angeles Times writer Fidel Martinez. While my four grandparents were all born in Mexico, they did not bring the Dia de los Muertos tradition to Texas when they crossed the border. I grew up in San Antonio in an extended family that included 38 Romos in a two block section on the Westside of town. ![]() Music and candles also contribute to the awakening. On those celebratory days, the dead were thought to be awakened from their eternal sleep by the presence of family and friends, and the scent of food and flowers. The Aztec Queen’s visit was celebrated with ofrendas, dances, and preparation of special foods such as pan de muerto or atole. Annually Mictecacihuatl returned to grave sites to make certain that the bones of the deceased were protected. The Aztec Queen Mictecacihuatl ruled over the underworld and served as a protector of the dead. The two-day celebration of the lives of the deceased is believed to have Aztec origins dating back to the 14th century, perhaps even centuries before that. The Mexican holiday known as Dia de Los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, falls on November 1 and 2.
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