Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-cnmwb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-24T22:45:32.890Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sugar, Colonialism, and Death: On the Origins of Mexico's Day of the Dead

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2012

Stanley Brandes
Stanley Brandes
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Mexico's most famous holiday is, without doubt, the Day of the Dead. At the end of October, large numbers of foreign visitors descend upon Mexico to witness colorful—some would say carnivalesque—ritual performances and artistic displays. Decorated breads, paper cutouts, and plastic toys, most of them humorously playing on the theme of death, are evident everywhere. Sculpted sugar candies in the form of skulls, skeletons, and caskets suggest an almost irreverent, macabre confrontation with mortality. During November 1 and November 2, Mexicans clean, decorate, and maintain vigil over the graves of relatives. Tombstones and burial sites are adorned with flowers, candles, and food, all aesthetically arranged in honor of the deceased. Some Mexicans claim that the souls of the departed watch over their living relatives during these few days. Negligent family members await punishment, whether on earth or in the afterlife. This belief is invoked throughout Mexico to explain the substantial time, money, and energy invested in the two-day ceremony.

Type
Ritual Power
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 39 , Issue 2 , April 1997 , pp. 270 - 299
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Aguirre Soronda, Antxon. 1989. “El fuego en el rito funerario vasco.” in La Religiosidad Popular, vol. 2 of Vida y Muerte: La Imaginatión Religiosa (Santaló, Carlos Alvarez. Rey, María Jesús Buxó y. and Becerra, Salvador Rodríguez. eds.). 344–584. Barcelona: Anthropos.Google Scholar
Ajofrín, Francisco de. 1958. Diario del Viaje Que por Orden de la Sagrada Congregatión de Propaganda Fide Hizo a la America Septentrional en el Siglo XVIII, Alcover, Vicente Castañeda y, ed. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia.Google Scholar
Alexiou, M. 1974. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Amades, Joan. 1956. Costumari Catalá: El Curs de L'any, vol. V. Barcelona: Salvat.Google Scholar
Anonymous. 1756. Relatión de lo Acaecido en la Cuidad de Granada el día Primero de Noviembre de 1755. … México, D.F.: Biblioteca Mexicana.Google Scholar
Arora, Shirley. 1980. “To the Grave with the Dead. … ”: Ambivalence in a Spanish Proverb.” Fabula, 21: 3–4, 223–46.Google Scholar
Barrett, Ward J. 1976. “Morelos and its Sugar Industry in the Late Eighteenth Century,” in Provinces of Early Mexico: Variants of Spanish American Regional Evolution, (Altman, Ida and Lockhart, James, eds.). 63–95. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications.Google Scholar
Barrett, Ward J. 1977. La Hacienda Azucarera de los Marqueses del Valle. México. D.F.: Siglo XXI.Google Scholar
Barrett, Ward J.; and Schwartz, Stuart B.. 1975. “Comparación entre dos economías azucareras coloniales: Morelos, México y Bahía, Brasil,” in Haciendas, Latifundios y Plantaciones en America, Florescano, Enrique, ed., 532–72. México, D.F.: Siglo XXI.Google Scholar
Bastien, Joseph. 1978. Mountain of the Condor. St. Paul: West.Google Scholar
Beidler, Lloyd M. 1975. “The Biological and Cultural Role of Sweeteners1,” in Sweeteners: Issues and Uncertainties, White, Robt. R., ed., 11–18. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar
Benavente, Fr. Toribio de [Motolonía]. 1951. History of the Indians of New Spain, Steck, Francis Borgia, trans. Washington, D.C.: American Academy of Franciscan History.Google Scholar
Bloch, Maurice. 1971. Plating the Dead: Tombs, Ancestral Villages, and Kinship Organisation in Madagascar. London: Seminar.Google Scholar
Brandes, Stanley. 1975. Migration, Kinship, and Community: Tradition and Transition in a Spanish Village. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Brandes, Stanley. 1988. Power and Persuasion: Fiestas and Social Control in Rural Mexico. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brodman, Barbara. 1976. The Mexican Cult of Death in Myth and Literature. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida.Google Scholar
Burga, Manuel. 1976. De la Encomienda a la Hacienda Capitalista: El Valle de Jequetepeque del Siglo XVI AL XX. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.Google Scholar
Buechler, Hans. 1980. The Masked Media: Fiestas and Social Interaction in the Bolivian Highlands. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burkhart, Louise M. 1989. The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Moral Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.Google Scholar
Cantor, Sidney M. 1975. “Patterns of Use.” in Sweeteners: Issues and Uncertainties White, Robert R., ed., 19–28. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences.Google Scholar
Carmichael, Elizabeth; and Sayer, Chloë. 1991. The Skeleton at the Feast: The Day of the Dead in Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Cases, Bartolomé de las. 1992. The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account, Briffault, Herma, trans. Baltimore; Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casas Gaspar, Enrique. 1947. Costumbres Españolas de Nacimiento, Noviazgo, Casamiento, y Muerte. Madrid: Escelicer.Google Scholar
Caso, Alfonso. 1953. El Pueblo del Sol. Mexico, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica.Google Scholar
Childs, Robert V.; and Altman, Patricia B.. 1982. Vive Tu Recuerdo: Living Traditions in the Mexican Days of the Dead. Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, University of California at Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Cook, Sherbourne F; and Borah, Woodrow. 1979. Essays in Population History: Mexico and California, 3 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cornides, A. 1967. “All Souls' Day,” in New Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Covarrubias, Miguel. 1947. Mexico South: The Isthmus of Tehuantepec. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Coy, P.E.B. 1988. “Dust Jacket Commentary.” for Todos Santos in Rural Tlaxcala, Nutini, Hugo. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Crocker, J. C. 1977. “The Mirrored Self: Identity and Ritual Inversion among the Eastern Bororo.” Ethnology, 16: 2, 129–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curet, Francesc. 1953. Els Barcelonins: la Mort. vol. 3 of Visions Barcelonines, 1760–1860. Barcelona: Dalmau i Jover.Google Scholar
Díaz, , Guerrero, Rogelio. 1968. Estudios de Psicologia del Mexicano. Mexico, D.F.: F. Trillas.Google Scholar
Dunn, Richard S. 1972. Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Durán, Diego. 1964. The Aztecs: The History of the Indies of New Spain, Heyden, Doris and Horcasitas, Fernando, trans. New York: Orion.Google Scholar
Epton, Nina. 1968. Spanish Fiestas. London: Cassell.Google Scholar
Espinosa, Aurelio M. 1918. “All-Souls Day at Zuñi, Acoma, and Laguna.” Journal of American Folklore, 31: 122, 550–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fagg, John Edwin. 1965. Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Fergusson, Erna. 1934. Fiesta in Mexico. New York: A. A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Fernández Kelly, Patricia. 1974. “Death in Mexican Folk Culture.” American Quarterly. 25: 5, 516–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Florescano, Enrique, ed. 1975. Haciendas, Latifundias y Plantaciones en America Latina. Mexico, D.F.: Siglo XXI.Google Scholar
Foster, George M. 1960. Culture and Conquest: America's Spanish Heritage. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, no. 27. New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation.Google Scholar
Furtado, Celso. 1977. “The Early Brazilian Sugar Economy,” in Haciendas and Plantations in Latin American History, (Keith, Robert G., ed.). 63–71. New York: Holmes and Meier.Google Scholar
Gabriel, , Llompart, C. R. 1965. “Pan sobre la tumba.” Revista de Dialectología y Tradiciones Populares (Madrid), 11: 2, 96–102.Google Scholar
Gaillard, Jacques. 1950. Catholicisme. Paris: Presse Catholique.Google Scholar
Gibson, Charles. 1964. The Aztecs under Spanish Ride: A History of the Indians of the Valley of Mexico, 1519–1810. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gonzales, Michael J. 1985. Plantation Agriculture and Social Control in Northern Peru, 1875–1933. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Gossen, , Gary, H.; and León-Portilla, Miguel, eds. 1993. South and Meso-American Native Spirituality. New York: Crossroad.Google Scholar
Haberstein, Robert W.; and Lamers, William M.. 1963. Funeral Customs the World Over. Milwaukee: Bultin.Google Scholar
Hertz, Robert. 1907. “Contribution à une étude sur la représentation collective de la mort.” Anné Sociologique, 10: 48–137.Google Scholar
Hewes, , Gordon, W. 1954. “Mexicans in Search of the ‘Mexican’: Notes on Mexican National Character Studies.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 13:2, 209–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huerta, Maria Teresa. 1993. Empresarios del Azúcar en el Siglo XIX. México, D.F.: Instituto de Antropología e Historia.Google Scholar
Ingham, John M. 1986. Mary, Michael, and Lucifer: Folk Catholicism in Central Mexico. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Kinsbruner, Jay. 1987. Penny Capitalism in Spanish America: The Pulperos of Puebla, Mexico City, Caracas, and Buenos Aires. Boulder, CO: Westview.Google Scholar
de Alva, Klor, Jorge, J.. 1988. “Sahagún and the Birth of Modern Ethnology: Representing, Confessing, and Inscribing the Native Other,” in Klor de Alva, Nicholson, and Quiñones, , eds., The Works of Bernardino de Sahagún: Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-Century Aztec Mexico, 31–52. Albany: State University of Albany, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies.Google Scholar
de Alva, Klor, Jorge, J.; Nicholson, H. B.; and Quiñones, Eloise, eds. 1988. “Introduction,” in The Works of Bernardino de Sahagún: Pioneer Ethnographer of Sixteenth-Century Aztec Mexico, 1–12. Albany: State University of New York at Albany, Institute for Mesoamerican Studies.Google Scholar
Laughlin, Robert M. 1969. “The Tzotzil,” in Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vogt, Evon, ed.. vol. 7, 152–94. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Limón Rojas, Miguel. 1984. “The Concept of Death in Mexico.” Speech delivered on October 25, Museo Nacional de Artes e Industrias Populares, Instituto Nacional Indigenista. Excelsior, Nov. 2.Google Scholar
Lipp, Frank J. 1991. The Mixe of Oaxaca: Religion, Ritual, and Healing. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Llabrés Quintana, Gabriel. 1925. “Los penetets de mort.” Correo de Mallorca, October 1925.Google Scholar
Lockhart, James. 1992. The Nahuas after the Conquest. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Lopatin, I. 1960. The Cult of the Dead among the Natives of Amur Basin. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Blanch, Lope, Juan, M. 1963. Vocabulario Mexicano Relativo a la Muerte. Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Centro de Estudios Literarios.Google Scholar
López-Austin, Alfredo. 1973. Hombre-Dios: Religion y Politico en al Mundo Nahuatl. Mexico City: Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.Google Scholar
Pinar, Lorenzo, Javier, Francisco. 1991. Muerte y Ritual en la Edad Moderna: El Caso de Zamora (1500–1800). Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca.Google Scholar
McNeill, William H. 1976. Plagues and Peoples. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Mancera, Pablo. 1974. Las Plantaciones Azucareras en el Perú, 1821–1875. Lima: Biblioteca Andina.Google Scholar
Martin, Cheryl E. 1985. Rural Society in Colonial Morelos. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Martínez Montiño, Francisco. 1778. Arte cle Cocina, Pasteleria. Vizcocheria, y Conservería. Madrid: Pantaleón Aznar.Google Scholar
Marzal, Manuel M. 1993a. “Transplanted Spanish Catholicism,” in South and Meso-American Native Spirituality. Gossen, Gary and León-Portilla, Miguel. eds., 140–169. New York: Crossroad.Google Scholar
Marzal, Manuel M. 1993b. “The Tzeltal Maya-Christian Synthesis,” in South and Meso-American Native Spirituality, Gossen, Gary and León-Portilla, Miguel, eds., 228–250. New-York: Crossroad.Google Scholar
Mintz, Sidney W. 1985. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Viking.Google Scholar
Mitchell, B. R. 1993. International Historical Statistics: The Americas. 1750–1988. New York: Stockton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mörner, Magnus. 1975. “En torno a las haciendas de la región del Cuzco desde el Siglo XVIII.” in Haciendas, Latifundios y Plantaciones en America Latina, Florescano, Enrique. ed., 346–392. Mexico. D.F.: Siglo XXI.Google Scholar
Universitario, Museo. 1974–1975. La Muerte: Expresiones Mexicanas cle un Enigma. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México: Directión General de Difusión Cultural.Google Scholar
Nutini, Hugo. 1988. Todos Santos in Rural Tlaxcala: A Syncretic, Expressive, Symbolic Analysis of the Cult of the Dead. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zazueta, Ochoa, Angel, Jesús. 1976. La Muerte y Los Muertos: Culto, Servicio, Ofrenda y Humor de Una Comunidad. México, D.F.: Sep-Setentas.Google Scholar
Parsons, Elsie Clews. 1917. “All-Souls Day at Zuñi. Acoma, and Laguna.” Journal of American Folklore, 30: 118, 495–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paz, Octavio. 1961. The Labyrinth of Solitude: Life and Thought in Mexico, Kemp, Lysander, trans. New York: Grove.Google Scholar
Poleszynski, Dag. 1982. Food, Social Cosmology, and Mental Health: The Case of Sugar. Tokyo: United Nations University.Google Scholar
Sahagún, Fr. Bernardino de. 1978. General History of the Things of New Spain, Codex, Florentine, translated by Anderson, Arthur and Dibble, Charles E.. Santa Fe, New Mexico: School of American Research.Google Scholar
Sandstrom, Alan R., and Sandstrom, Pamela Effrein. 1986. Traditional Papermaking and Paper Cult Figures of Mexico. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Scheffler, Lilian. 1976. “La celebración del día de muertos en San Juan Totalac. Tlaxcala.” Boletín del Departamento de Investigation de las Tradiciones Populares, 3: 91–103.Google Scholar
Schcper-Hughes, Nancy. 1992. Death without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, C. 1967. “Feast of All Saints.” in New Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Super, John C. 1988. Food, Conquest and Colonization in Sixteenth-Century Spanish America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, William B. 1976. “Town and country in the Valley of Oaxaca,” in Provinces of Early Mexico: Variants of Spanish American Regional Evolution, Altman, Ida and Lockhart, James. eds., 63–95. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications.Google Scholar
United Nations. 1993. Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean: 1992 Edition. Santiago de Chile: Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.Google Scholar
Van Gennep, Arnold. 1947–1953. Manuel de Folklore Francois Contemporain vol. 1, Parts 3–6. Paris: A. Picard.Google Scholar
Vansittart, E.C. 1990. “All Souls' Day in Italy.” The Antiquary (London), 36: 326–30.Google Scholar
Viqueira, Juan-Pedro. 1984. “La Ilustración y las fiestas religiosas populares en la Ciudad de México (1730–1821).” Cuicuilco (Revista de la Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia), 14–15: 7–14.Google Scholar
Wolf, Eric: and Mintz, Sidney. 1977. “Haciendas and plantations.” in Haciendas and Plantations in Latin American History, Keith, Robert G., ed., 36–62. New York: Holmes and Meier.Google Scholar