Day of the Dead

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Known most famously as a Mexican tradition with it's skeletons and sugared skulls, the Day of the Dead is also celebrated in other parts of the world, including Guatemala. While the sentiments are the same, the celebrations differ slightly. As everywhere else, the belief is that the separation between the living and the dead is less on November 1st and 2nd, so families spend those days visiting the graves of loved ones, bringing food and conversation to the cemeteries to share with them. For some it's a solemn experience and I assume that this has much to do with the amount of time since the loved one died, but for most it's a happy time, with some even hiring bands to play at the graveside and dancing in celebration of their dearly departed. I visited the cemetery in Xela a couple of days before the actual festival and whole families were there repainting tombs, clearing trash, and laying in cut flowers. Again, for most it seemed a joyous experience, where everyone came together over their dead relatives.

I'd also heard that the cemetery in Zunil, a local Maya village 20 minutes from Quetzaltenango, had a very traditionally Maya celebration, with the small cemetery decorated entirely in the leaves of one particular plant. After climbing the hill to the top of the cemetery the view was breathtaking. All of the tombs floated in a sea of red fronds, accented with fresh cut flowers of every colour. The celebrations in Zunil also felt a little more subdued than in Xela, only one family had hired a band to play. For the most part family members were sitting beside the graves sharing in the day quietly amongst themselves.

The Guatemalan tradition also involves kites - lots and lots of kites, as the Maya believe that kites allow them to communicate even more closely with heaven. The cemetery in both Zunil and Xela were full of children flying all manner of kites, from simple homemade creations using scraps of wood and plastic bags to serious box kites that were cutting through the sky. In Xela, they even held a kite contest sponsored by a local funeral home (fittingly enough) and had categories including largest kite, most decorative, longest flying, highest flying, etc. This was serious business, with folks warming up their kites for hours before.