(Any ofrenda erected for me, I’m sorry to say, will likely include English breakfast tea or Diet Coke.) Fire is represented by candles and air by the colorful papel picado, which moves in the wind.Īnother key element for any ofrenda is salt. Water is displayed, but you’re free to include other beverages the deceased enjoyed - tequila, chocolate or that Sprite. The masa is the body, the filling the bodily liquids and the cornhusk wrapper, or hoja, the coffin.Īlong with earth, the other three elements of water, fire and air are represented on the ofrenda. Among Nahua people in Puebla, tamales play a vital role, serving as a host for the visiting spirits. On the ofrenda, the pan and other foodstuffs (mole, tamales, fruits, nuts, whatever) represent the earth. (You’ll find pan de muerto at panaderías or Latino supermarkets.) Ramírez-Oropeza showed me photos of what she called the “weirdest and most contemporary” takes on the pan, the loaf serving as sandwich bread with fillings of chilaquiles or roast pork. No matter the shape or color, the pan de muerto serves as both an offering on the ofrenda and as a nice snack. These breads aren’t loaves but circles of dough - imagine little steering wheels - and bright pink. Then there’s Mizquic bread - the name comes from Mitclan, the land of the dead. In Guanajuato state, it shows up as a dollop of color on body-shaped loaves covered in white frosting. The pink appears on various forms of pan de muerto. The Spaniards banned the plant for a time because of supposed links to human sacrifice. Pre-Hispanic people made a ceremonial bread with amaranth, which produces flowers in a rich, dusky maroon. Some pan is decorated with pink sugar, a color scheme with ancient roots. Here’s what goes into building an ofrenda, or altar, for a deceased loved one. Here’s howĭía de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is Nov. Lifestyle Anyone can make a Día de Muertos altar. The bread used in parts of Oaxaca is sometimes more elaborate, with glazing or frosting creating intricate designs or the faces of saints. In Ocotepec, a Guerrero state village where Ramírez-Oropeza spent years conducting research, the pan is more symbolic, with oval-like bodies and just hints of legs and arms on the chest. Sometimes the bread takes a body shape, with straight legs and folded arms. While the round loaves of pan de muerto are symbolic, other designs are more literal. “Remember, everything is mixed together,” she said. In fact, some people might view the strips as bones, directions and the cross all at once and comfortably so, a multicultural interpretation colonizing Spanish priests would have declared heathen. What’s more, a round bit of dough often included where the strips intersect represents a skull.Īnd the four directions and Christian cross? The strips can represent those too. The strips on the pan de muerto indeed represent bones, Ramírez-Oropeza told me. We are re-creating ourselves,” Ramírez-Oropeza said. “So when we’re cooking - heating a tortilla or whatever - we’re doing that too symbolically. An image from an Aztec-era codex that Ramírez-Oropeza showed me depicts the goddess Quilaztli or Cihuacoatl pulverizing the bones on a metate, a slanted stone grinding tool found in Mexico to this day, usually used for breaking down corn. She recounted the story of how the god Quetzalcoatl and his twin, Xolotl, journey to Mictlan, the land of the dead, to retrieve bones that were used to create human beings.Ī goddess helps in the creation of humans and does so with a cooking implement. The use of foods to honor and welcome the dead has roots that stretch back to one of the Aztecs’ creation myths, Ramírez-Oropeza said. The Roman Catholic Church observes All Saints’ Day on Nov. One of the two calendars Mesoamericans used consisted of 18 months of 20 days certain months featured remembrances of the dead, and two of those months fell around October and November. This brings us to how traditions combined for Day of the Dead. We’re dying and we’re living at the same time,” Ramírez-Oropeza said. Life and death, for example, were seen as existing comfortably side by side and not in opposition. This fits neatly with the omnipresent concept of duality in pre-Hispanic thought. The second is what pre-Hispanic peoples called ixiptlah, a Nahuatl word meaning an image acting as a substitute of something or someone. Covering the issues, politics, culture and lifestyle of the Latino community in L.A., California and beyond.
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