Criticism of Regime Mars Mexican Holiday

The Day of the Dead, a holiday when Mexicans not only laugh at death but also transform it into candy and eat it, was marked Saturday by bitter political denunciations in the wake of September’s disastrous earthquakes.

Flowery streetside altars, decorated as usual with skull-shaped cakes and candies, were also adorned with written attacks on the government’s earthquake rescue and relief efforts.

Speeches calling for stepped-up aid for the homeless and the prosecution of corrupt officials accompanied religious ceremonies. Relatives of victims whose bodies were buried in mass graves grumbled that not enough had been done to identify the remains.

Celebration Seems Subdued

Celebration of the Day of the Dead, a sometimes raucous event, seemed subdued, as might be expected of a holiday that followed so closely the quakes of Sept. 19 and 20.

“We know too many colleagues who died, saw too many babies and mothers crushed,” said Carlota Serrano, a nurse at the destroyed Juarez Hospital near downtown.

The heavy political overtones of this year’s holiday suggest a lingering dissatisfaction with the way the authorities handled the disaster--this despite an intense public relations campaign by the government of President Miguel de la Madrid.

The Day of the Dead is a fiesta rather than a day of mourning, and drinking, joking and camaraderie often accompany an all-night wake. Mexicans put out favorite foods designed to lure deceased relatives back for a family gathering--in some places, picnics are held in graveyards--and most celebrants in Mexico City set up altars of food and flowers in their homes.

Politics is no stranger to the holiday. In the last century, caricatures of politicians as skeletons became popular, a tradition still in fashion. One store in Mexico City specializes in tiny cadaverous figures dressed as public officials and accompanied with witty sayings and puns.

Main Political Topics

The earthquakes, along with Mexico’s heavy foreign debt, constitute the main political topic in Mexico these days.

Residents of a large public housing complex at Tlatelolco, a borough of Mexico City, set up a traditional altar as a centerpiece for an all-night vigil. The colorful platform was placed in front of the gaping basement of what used to be the Nuevo Leon building. Hundreds of residents died inside Nuevo Leon when two-thirds of it collapsed during the quake.

The altar, topped with marigolds, carnations, candles, food and pictures of Jesus and the Virgin of Guadalupe, patroness of Mexico, included signs that read, “Nuevo Leon Will Be the Tomb of Irresponsible Officials” and “Here Lie Victims of Corruption.”

Tlatelolco residents have protested that the government failed to heed warnings that the building was unsound. They charge that the government is shortchanging them on payments being made for them to move out of condemned buildings.

At the ruins of Juarez Hospital, a garland of flowers carried the message, “We Will Fight for Justice.”

“That means we want someone to pay for the death and destruction here,” said nurse Serrano, who was tending an altar in memory of the facility’s dead patients and staff members. “The hospital had many construction problems that were never addressed.”

Garment District Mass

Amid the wreckage of Mexico City’s garment district, a Roman Catholic Mass was combined with criticism of government-connected trade unions as well as greedy manufacturers.

Several garment workshops collapsed in the earthquake, and some owners tried to lay off workers without benefits. The owners have also been accused of concentrating on getting machinery out of their factories rather than recovering bodies of the dead. The unions, reportedly headed by corrupt officials, failed to come to their members’ aid.

“The Life of One Garment Worker Is Worth All the Machinery in the World,” read one protest sign at Saturday’s Mass.

The government is sensitive to criticism of its handling of the disaster and has tried to counteract it by televising progress reports from high-ranking officials. The public relations efforts suffer, however, from incomplete information.

Mexico City Mayor Ramon Aguirre told television viewers that 3,000 dead had been pulled from the ruins. The speech followed by days a United Nations report, prepared with government help, that estimated that 8,000 had died. Other death counts have been higher.

4,000 Reported Rescued

Aguirre also said 4,000 victims were rescued alive from the debris, an unlikely figure unless he was counting patients evacuated from damaged, but still standing, hospitals. In any case, his point seemed to be that the government rescued more alive than dead during the emergency.

The education minister reported on the opening of schools but failed to discuss why more than 100 school buildings collapsed or were damaged beyond repair.

At least one anonymous street-corner artist near the Zocalo was unimpressed by the government’s public relations campaign. On a wall he drew a skull with the word “credibility” written on the forehead, an indication that one person’s faith in the government was dead.