Almost a week later we are still thinking about Dia de los Muertos, or th
e Day of the Dead, where families gather together at the cemetery to honor those who have died.
This event is different from Memorial Day or Veteran’s Day in the US, where we solemnly place flowers on graves and quietly pay our respects.
In fact, it has altered my fears around death and dying, which mainly have to do with being forgotten. If friends and family can remember me with love and laughter at least once a year, isn’t that immortality?
The Day of the Dead
This is a major holiday in Ecuador, and businesses and schools are closed in observance. (It just so happens that the next day was the celebration of the founding of Cuanca so everyone had a 5 day holiday).
We went to two cemeteries in Otavalo, the mestizos and the indigenous (more details below), which are separated by a wall and have two separate entrances. It seems even in death there is separation between these two cultures.
For each cemetery there is a street filled with vendors leading to the entrance. Visitors can buy flowers, bread called guagua de pan which is shaped like people and animals, a blackberry juice called colada morada, fruits and vegetables, and a wide variety of cooked food. You can even buy ice cream and cotton candy.
In many ways it feels like going to a concert or festival as you approach each entrance.
Mestizos Cemetery
Mestizos is a term commonly used in Ecuador to mean people who are of mixed or Spanish heritage. Coming from a “melting pot” mentality in the US, this seems a little strange to me. Mestizos are what you and I would consider everyday people who work, shop and live a lot like we do.
The mestizos’ cemetery is mainly comprised of tombs with display shelves at the front enclosed by decorative grates. On the Day of the Dead, families unlock the grates, whitewash the tombs, place fresh flowers and religious cards, and visit with family and friends as they remember their loved ones.
It is a festive but low-key celebration, and almost everyone is dressed in their Sunday best. We mainly saw middle-aged to older people at the mestizos’ cemetery and very few children.
Indigenous Cemetery
The indigenous people are native to the area and retain the language, dress, and customs they have had for hundreds of years. There is a distinction between mestizos and indigenous in Ecuador, and it extends even in their Day of the Dead customs.
The indigenous celebration is much livelier and includes entire families – great-grandparents down to newborn babies - at each gravesite. The graves are mounds of dirt on a hill in almost a stair-stepped fashion with crosses for headstones. In fact, people use the mounds just like stairs as they walk up and down visiting with each other and paying respects. Many of these graves contain more than one person from a family with multiple crosses at the head of the grave.
The indigenous families are also dressed in their best clothes, which include the traditional clothing for women of long skirts, brightly embroidered white shirts, and ribbons in their hair. The older men also dress traditionally in bright white pants, sandals, and ponchos, but the younger men seem to favor more modern clothes. The men and women all keep their glossy black hair long and either braided or tied back.
The women spend days preparing food for the celebration, and they carry it in bundles on their backs to their family gravesites. They share traditional foods with each other and with their neighbors, and they leave bits of food on the grave for the dead as well.
Graves are cleaned, weeds are pulled, and crosses are whitewashed. Flowers are placed at each grave, and families sit and stand around the mounds eating and visiting with each other as they listen to music and play with children. It is truly a site to behold.
Being There
It is hard to express our feelings from being there. We were both overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and smells, and we felt like spies peering into a secret experience not meant to be shared with the outside world.
We would have never inserted ourselves in the thick of things like we did without our local friends Catherine and Fernando, and we are eternally grateful to them for suggesting that we visit the cemeteries together. In actuality, no one seemed to mind that we were there – or even notice, for the most part. We noticed that we were the only gringos there, though.
The experience was very moving and made me regret that our society often treats death as a period to life instead of a comma, especially in how our friends and family are expected to remember us.
How do you remember and celebrate the lives of your ancestors?
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