On Tour With the Dead

We only come here to sleep,

We only come here to dream.

It is not true, it is not true

That we come to Earth to live.

--pre-Columbian Indian poem

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Patzcuaro, Mexico--It’s late October and we’re on our way to Lake Patzcuaro to observe one of Mexico’s most famous Day of the Dead celebrations. We stop for gas in Valle de Santiago, between Guanajuato and Morelia in central Mexico. But when Juan Carlos, the driver of our tour van, tries to start the engine, there is silence.

“Esta muerto (“It’s dead”),” he says. Everyone laughs. It’s a fitting comment for our quest: to see how this uniquely Mexican holiday is observed in several towns, and to gain some understanding of its roots, which date to pre-Columbian times.

People from around the world flock to Mexico to witness this celebration of life and death, a mixture of pre-Hispanic Mexico and Christian Europe from which curious rituals evolved. The Day of the Dead takes the Aztec belief in many realms of reality and a continual cycle of life and blends it with the Christian idea of immortality, All Souls’ Day and pagan rites.

At midnight Oct. 31, church bells toll throughout the country to announce the opening of the cemetery gates and the gates to the “other world.” The bells ring again at dawn Nov. 2 to send the spirits back to their domain and restore the balance between life and death for another year.

During the Day of the Dead, families hold all-night candlelight vigils at the graves of their departed relatives (Nov. 1 is for children, Nov. 2 is for adults.). Families tidy up and decorate the graves with bright flowers and candles.

I have become something of a “deadhead” in the last couple of years after visiting Day of the Dead observances in two of the best places in Mexico to experience the holiday: an island of Janitzio in Lake Patzcuaro, and the hill town of Guanajuato, about 220 miles northwest of Mexico City.

In Guanajuato (gwana-WAH-toe), we visit the Alhondiga de Granaditas regional museum, where an Aztec altar is neatly arranged with candles, potatoes and peanuts. A mock corpse has jade in its mouth, a pre-Columbian tradition, and is festooned with feathers and flowers. A small ceramic dog is connected with a rope. In the old times it might have been a real dog because the Mexicans, like the ancient Egyptians, buried their dead with things they loved in life--and might need in death, which was seen as a journey.

A strange smell wafts up in the darkened room. It’s copal, a type of plant-based incense used for millenniums in Mexico. Bright orange marigold-like flowers, called zempasuchil, are everywhere. Incense and marigolds have been used for centuries in death rituals. It is said that the flowers’ musty smell draws the dead, and that copal drives evil spirits away.

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Outside in the narrow, winding streets of this lovely colonial town, vendors at stands sell special Day-of-the-Dead edibles and paraphernalia. Dominating the selection are skull-shaped candies (calaveras--the skull with the symbol of life to pre-Columbian Indians), and loaves of pan de muerto decorated with “bones” of meringue.

Our accommodations at La Casa de Espiritus Alegres (House of Good Spirits), a short drive from the town center, couldn’t be more appropriate. Owned by two California sisters, this B&B; is an 18th century hacienda whimsically decorated in the spirit of the holiday. Every room is delightfully different, with fireplaces, hand-tiled bathrooms and canopy beds.

At an altitude of 6,724 feet, Guanajuato owes its existence to the area’s rich silver mines, which provided a third of the world’s silver in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. It’s full of interesting architecture and cobblestoned streets and is also the birthplace of muralist Diego Rivera, whose home is now a museum.

Guanajuato hosts the annual Cervantino, an international arts festival held during Easter week. But one of Guanajuato’s most gruesome attractions (perhaps embarrassing to the town’s plentiful patrons of the arts) is the Mummy Museum. “If you can’t pay, you can’t stay,” was the philosophy of the old municipal cemetery, the Panteon, where bodies were disinterred from crypts after their families didn’t keep up the burial rent payments. Somehow--perhaps because of the dry climate, no one seems sure why--the exhumed bodies were mummified rather than decomposed.

Eventually a museum was built to house about 100 of the grotesque mummies, displayed in glass cases; it’s now a prime tourist site. It’s a bit creepy, and not recommended for young children or faint-of-heart adults.

After leaving Guanajuato, our van wends its way to Morelia, our base of operations for exploring nearby villages. With its magnificent colonial buildings, Morelia is the stately capital of Michoacan state, one of Mexico’s loveliest regions. From Morelia we will pull an all-nighter Nov. 1, visiting the famous celebration on Janitzio and another smaller island in Lake Patzcuaro. We’ll also visit local village cemeteries.

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In the Tarascan village of Tzintzuntzan, strings of small flags flutter across the narrow main street. Shops filled with the beautiful basketry and woodcarving, for which this town is known, line the street. Many residents here are pure Tarascan Indian.

Tzintzuntzan (roughly, seen-soon-sahn) means “place of the hummingbirds,” and this small village was once the capital of the great Purepecha empire that ruled more than 100 other towns and villages.

Nearby, the ancient ruined pyramid of Jacatam looms on a hillside overlooking Lake Patzcuaro, which once lapped at its base but has now receded. Jacatam, like other Tarascan pyramids, is rounded at the corners, which represent north, south, east and west. The ancient Tarascans believed that Lake Patzcuaro was the entrance to heaven. But the town cemetery is where the action is Nov. 1.

Golden light of the late afternoon illuminates the marigolds that decorate almost every grave in the shady cemetery. Besides the marigolds, pink gladioli, along with flowers of every type and color, are bunched in makeshift vases of paint cans and buckets, or just stuck in the loose earth mounded on each grave. Families bring earth to the cemetery in wheelbarrows to build up the graves. Some graves rise 3 or 4 feet with the freshly packed earth. “It’s to make them grander,” says our guide Juan Carlos, a city boy from Guadalajara, where the old traditions are not as popular as in the small country villages like this one.

Beneath the tall pines, Tarascan women sit bundled in their blue rebozos, waiting for the spirits. Royal blue with narrow black stripes is the traditional style of shawls worn by the women of the area, who sit solemnly by the graves as children play around them. Young families in contemporary clothing mingle with the traditionally dressed grandmothers. The smoke from small fires, candles and incense turns an ethereal blue in the shafts of sunlight.

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Next, we head to the small village of Santa Clara del Cobre, about an hour’s drive away. Cumulus clouds tower above the green, volcanic mountains of Michoacan. Trussed cornstalks line the dry, harvested fields. Women bent under huge bundles of red poinsettias make their way to the cemeteries. In the back of every pickup truck are buckets and armfuls of marigolds. Along the roadside a family emerges from the forest with a donkey laden down with supplies for the night vigil. A pine scent of burning wood fills the air.

When we arrive at the cemetery at the edge of town, whole families are digging and weeding around the graves. Some are scrubbing off the tombstones with soap and water. Beyond the graveyard, cornfields stretch out against the green mountains and purple-blue sky. We are transfixed by the beauty of the land and the people paying their respects. One tombstone includes a stone steering wheel, signifying that the deceased was a truck driver. The inscription says he died on the road.

As dusk approaches we return to Patzcuaro, the largest local village and hub of the Day of the Dead celebration, where people catch small boats out to Janitzio Island.

To sustain us for the long evening ahead, we stop for a meal at Camino Real, a gas station-turned-restaurant with local specialties. Sadly, the delicate white fish caught in Lake Patzcuaro is no longer considered safe to eat because of the lake’s pollution. But there are many other delicious choices: traditional Tarascan soup made of chicken, tomatoes, beans and pork; enchiladas suisas filled with shredded chicken; a tasty nopal salad (cactus with lettuce, olives, grapefruit and avocado); rice with mole sauce and chiles; horchata, a traditional drink of milk, rice water and cinnamon; and membrillo, candied guayaba fruit, for dessert. Cost for this feast? Less than $3 a person.

Later, in Patzcuaro’s normally placid main square, is a giant marketplace, with signs announcing texquisitos (hot dogs) and ponche (punch). It’s the place to be for tourists and locals alike, a kind of giant party with shopping, socializing and beer drinking at sidewalk cafes. One can buy an entire set of living room furniture, clothing or carved wooden masks, baskets, pottery, jewelry, food and Day of the Dead trinkets in every form, from funny ceramic miniatures of cadavers lounging in bathtubs, to skeletal rock singers, brides and babies. It’s a joke on death, while paying tribute to it.

Near midnight, we join the throngs heading to Janitzio, the largest of several islands in Lake Patzcuaro. Small boats ferry people back and forth on the 20-minute ride. Cone-shaped and topped with a giant statue of the Revolutionary hero Jose Morelos, the island homes and shops march up a steep hill, as do the thousands of people making their way up streets made of giant stone steps. It feels like some remote Greek isle.

In the small cemetery unfolds an awkward scene: hoards of gaping tourists and local people trying to maintain their traditions without being tripped over. Women sit beside tall candles with baskets of food covered in embroidered white cloths. Tripod-lugging tourists vie for the best video shots with TV cameras.

I ask a local woman what she thinks of the hubbub. “No, it doesn’t really bother me, but they [the tourists] should pay for it,” she replies.

The families and older women seem unperturbed by the crowds, as they sit waiting for a sign from the spirits, or praying. It’s said that a flicker of the candle signifies the spirit’s arrival or a nod of approval, but in this crowd it could signify the passing of many corporeal bodies.

Some families have made elaborate latticed wooden structures decorated with apples, bananas, marigolds and candy. Jazzy music wafts down from the town above as bells toll in the church. It’s a weird jumble of sounds and sights that would scare off a zombie.

With relief, we leave Janitzio about 2 a.m. and take another boat to Pacanda, the most remote island in the lake. After a half-an-hour ride, the boat reaches the still, dark island, quite a contrast to mobbed Janitzio.

After a hike through dark fields and then along a bumpy road, we reach the cemetery at 3 a.m. Candles throw a warm orange glow in the chilly black night. As we pass under a wrought-iron archway into the cemetery, an Indian woman hospitably offers us cups of hot punch, gratefully accepted. One American couple and our small group seem to be the only tourists. Later, as we leave, some women and children are still hustling to the cemetery with big bunches of flowers for the all-night vigil and the once-a-year opportunity to visit with their deceased families. And here, it seems one might observe the candle flicker in the still night and truly visit with a spirit.

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GUIDEBOOK

Deadheads Around Morelia

Getting there: Mexicana flies nonstop three times weekly from LAX to Morelia, a good place to base yourself for touring Day of the Dead towns. Lowest restricted round-trip fare is $488.20 (includes taxes). Mexicana and Aeromexico also offer connecting flights, involving a change of planes, through Guadalajara and Mexico City. Cabs and buses are inexpensive ways to visit small villages.

Where to stay: In Guanajuato: La Casa de Espiritus Alegres B&B; (La Ex-Hacienda la Trinidad No. 1, Marfil, Guanajuato 36250, Mexico; telephone/fax 011-52-473-31013). Rates: $75-$95 per night for a double, including breakfast (no credit cards). Hotel San Diego (tel. 011-52-473-21300, fax 011-52-473-25626). Rates: $43-$65.

In Morelia: Posada de la Soledad (Ignacio Zaragoza 90, Morelia, Michoacan 58000; tel. 011-52-43-130-627, fax 011-52-43-122-111). Rates $50-$80 per double. Hotel Casino (Portal Hidalgo 229, Morelia, Michoacan 5800; tel. 011-52-43-131-003, fax 011-52-43-121-252). Rates: $35-$60. Villa Montana, 201 Patzimba, 58090 Morelia, Michoacan, tel. 011-52-43-140-231, fax 011-52-43-151-423. Rates: $120 per double.

For more information: Mexican Government Tourism Office; tel. (310) 203-8191, fax (310) 203-8316.