Exhibitions 2

The Skeleton at the Feast: the Day of the Dead in Mexico (Museum of Mankind, till late 1992)

...we are in death

John Henshall enjoys the Mexicans'. exuberant commemoration of their dead

Mexicans like to say of themselves, 'somos muy fiesteros', or, we like a good fiesta, and they rarely party harder than on the Day of the Dead, 1-2 November. Nom- inally, this is the Christian feast of All Saints and All Souls, but Todos Santos manages to interweave strands of Roman Catholicism with the older beliefs of the pantheistic native Indian population. It is Mexico's most lavish festival, and easily overshadows both Christmas and Easter. For Mexicans, the Day of the Dead is a time when the deceased return to earth for a few hours each year, to •look up old friends and family, eat, drink and celebrate, and sample again the pleasures they enjoyed on earth. The nature of the festival and its celebration are a subject of continu- ing debate in Mexican society, but most

agree on its importance.

The current large, sparkling exhibition at the Museum of Mankind (Burlington Gar- dens, W1) shows us the Day of the Dead in all its garish splendour. Family shrines to the dead overflow with food, drink, incense and decorations such as papier-mâché skeletons, sugar skulls and pottery models of weeping children, which sit amid a cacophony of clashing colours — mauve, green, orange, white and black.

It is a determinedly joyous event, with no sinister overtones. If the idea of a two-

day celebration of the dead strikes us as odd, even disrespectful, for Mexicans it is an annual high spot. The pre-Hispanic Indian religions included no concept of pure, unadulterated evil — native deities

were ambivalent towards man. There was no after-life which depended on a Last Judgment: fates were sealed at the moment of birth and hell had no equiva- lent. People believed the netherworld was much like this one.

In many rural areas, preparations for the Day of the Dead take up much of the rest of the year. If city-dwellers spend the most on it, with lavish parties in graveyards and 'dis- cos for the dead', it is people in the small towns and villages, particularly those who are mestizo, of mixed race, who cele- brate it most earnest- ly. The trimmings may be public, but the event is essentially a private one for family and friends. Mexi- cans are used to living with death: the worlds of the living and the dead overlap constantly.

Families clean and dress graves for the festival and set up family shrines for those who return. They are often sited near fami- ly altars to household gods. These altars are stacked with provisions and enormous efforts go into building them. Their con- struction is a traditional craft for certain families. A huge example has been erected at the museum by a Mexican expert; an idea of how much these structures cost comes from the fact that this one includes 80 metres of white satin. The altars are bathed in blue copal incense smoke and decked with a blaze of orange cempachusils — marigolds, the 'flower of the dead'.

The dead return to earth unseen and absorb the essence of the foods and drinks left out for them; afterwards the living have their share. Clean clothes and a fresh som-

brero may be left out. Priests are booked for the graveyard celebrations and profes- sional prayer-makers hired. Separate days are set aside for the return of children's souls and for those of people who died in accidents or by violent means or from cer- tain illnesses. Those who have died during that year's October do not return until the following year.

The exhibition shows us exquisitely dec- orated pottery candelabra with the 'Tree of Life' theme of the journey from birth to the grave and the return on Todos Santos. Satirical calaveras — handbills featuring skeletal figures — poke fun at life's pride and vanities. This medium was favoured by the great Mexican engraver Juan Skeleton of papier-mache, by rtlipe Linares Guadalupe Posada at the start of the cen- tury. One example from 1991 shows the author Octavio Paz and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and marks the year when both won Nobel Prizes.

After the Spanish conquest of Mexico, Church leaders wished to gather into the fold the Indian population, and saw their taste for festi- vals of various kinds as a way of achieving this. They noted the significance of feast- ing on such occasions and tried to re-focus these pagan events and establish them as celebrations for Christian saints. The stubborn survival of the Day of the Dead and of local saints' days in city and village alike shows that the new arrivals miscalculated the strength of the hold such ancient rites exerted over the people; events like Todos Santos probably date back to the Aztec and Maya civilisa- tions of central America.

I came away from the exhibition with a sense of surprise and wonder at the skill of the generally untutored artists, sculptors, woodworkers and others who yearly make the hundreds of thousands of artefacts which come out each autumn to weigh down the village stalls and family altars. These extraordinary figurines, sculptures and costumes are a far cry from the some- what self-conscious offerings which turn up at harvest festivals, Hallowe'en and the like here. They are primitive yet rarely gauche, and many are truly inspired. This fine exhi- bition gives us a haunting insight into the annual round of a gifted people for whom death is simply 'another part of life'.