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The Museo de la Muerte, or Museum of Death, explores the role of death in Mexican culture. Death, skulls, funerals, and graves play a large—and often cheeky—role in Mexico. The museum traces the history of death from the Aztecs to modern Mexico, including the art and traditions that now make up Dia de Muertos.
La calavera Catrina, originally calavera Garbancera, was a social critique of those who wanted to look up to the European bourgeoisie and despised their own Mexican-ness. These literary calaveras or calaveras literarias are octavillas or eight octosyllabic verses that satirize the living styles of different social classes while highlighting ...
- Day of The Dead Traditions
- Celebrating The Dead Becomes Part of A National Culture
- The Rise of La Catrina
- Skulls of Protest, Witnesses to Blood
In these ceremonies, people build altars in their homes with ofrendas, offerings to their loved ones’ souls. Candles light photos of the deceased and items left behind. Families read letters and poems and tell anecdotes and jokes about the dead. Offerings of tamales, chiles, water, tequila and pan de muerto, a specific bread for the occasion, are l...
Honoring and communing with the dead continued throughout the turbulent 36 years that 50 governments ruled Mexico after it won its independence from Spain in 1821. When the Mexican Liberal Party led by Benito Juárez won the War of Reform in December 1860, the separation of church and state prevailed, but Día de Muertos remained a religious celebrat...
In Mexico’s thriving political art scene in the early 20th century, printmaker and lithographer Jose Guadalupe Posada put the image of the calaveras or skulls and skeletal figures in his art mocking politicians, and commenting on revolutionary politics, religion and death. His most well-known work, La Calavera Catrina, or Elegant Skull, is a 1910 z...
Over decades, celebrations honoring the dead—skulls and all—spread north into the rest of Mexico and throughout much of the United States and abroad. Schools and museums from coast to coast exhibit altars and teach children how to cut up the colorful papel picadofolk art to represent the wind helping souls make their way home. In the 1970s, the Chi...
Dec 14, 2023 · The uniquely Mexican calaveras are also based in the Mexican Indigenous tradition and belief system that death is a companion ever-present in a person’s life. Life is but a borrowed moment in time, for we all start our journey to the end of life from the moment we are born. Calaveritas may express pain and suffering.
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The Day of the Dead ( Spanish: el Día de Muertos or el Día de los Muertos) [2] [3] is a holiday traditionally celebrated on November 1 and 2, though other days, such as October 31 or November 6, may be included depending on the locality. [4] [5] [6] It is widely observed in Mexico, where it largely developed, and is also observed in other ...
- Creation of home altars to remember the dead, traditional dishes for the Day of the Dead
- November 2
- Prayer and remembrance of friends and family members who have died
Oct 29, 2023 · The calavera was forevermore La Catrina. Her fame, however, didn’t truly arrive until Posada’s riotous debut at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1944. The exhibition was a collaboration between ...
Today, the figure of Catrina, also sometimes called “La Muerte,” appears in sculpture, drawing, painting, and mixed media. During the season of El Día de los Muertos–in late October and early November–Catrina is celebrated throughout Mexico, the rest of Latin America, and the southwestern United States.
