El Dia de Los Muertos en Guatemala
While I’m not there to experience it first hand, I think it’s important and interesting to take some time to learn about one of the delightful festivals that happens in Guatemala, and will be ending the day I arrive: El Dia de los Muertos.
I thought the blog Growing Up Bilingual explained the purpose for the holiday nicely: It’s a day meant to honor our ancestors and celebrate the life of family members that have passed away and are remembered with love.
El Dia de Los Muertos is a popular holiday celebrated throughout Latin America on November 1st through the 2nd, linked to the Catholic Holidays All Souls Day and All Saints Day also on the 1st and 2nd of November. It originated in Mexico, where calaveras (sugar skulls) are an iconic part of the celebration. But it’s practiced throughout Latin America with various local traditions. In Guatemala, the inclusion of foods such as fiambre make it unique and indicative of the region's own multi-cultural history.
Celebrating and remembering the dead was common practice in pre-colonial times, and continues, with alterations due to Spanish influence and time, through to today explains Oscar Felipe in his article about the holiday.
El Dia de Los Muertos, or El Dia de Los Difuntos (as it’s also called in Guatemala) is the start of the “family holiday season” according to Guatemalan born Paula Bendfeldt-Diaz in her blog. People celebrate it in a number of ways in Guatemala, according to their own family traditions. However, according to this website, some key characteristics are spending time with family, visiting the cemetery where your ancestors are buried, decorating with flowers, and flying (homemade) kites.
Many will begin the day by decorating and cleaning the graves of loved ones, putting flowers on them, and sometimes, sitting and eating a family feast there, often including fiambre.
Fiambre
A key element to the day is eating fiambre with the family. Fiambre is a highly complex, multi-ingredient salad-like cold cut dish that takes many days to prepare. It sometimes has over 50 ingredients from specialty meats to exotic vegetables. The dish points to the regions multiculturalism because some of the ingredients are Arab and Spanish.
As previously mentioned, families will often go to their ancestors graves and have a picnic by their deceased loved ones, where they’ll eat the fiambre, sometimes saving the parts they know their dead loved ones would have liked to eat.
Below are a two links to some tasty looking recipes:
Barriletes Gigantes
Many towns throughout Guatemala have unique local traditions for the holiday. One of the most popularized and common however, is kite flying. In the towns Santiago Scatepequez and Sumpango specifically, the giant kite flying ceremonies or barriletes gigantes are particularly big attractions. Colorful and creative handmade kites are flown in the cemeteries in the towns and villages. Originally, this was meant to show those who had died where their family members where in the land of the living, so they could follow the kite down to them. Today however, many simply enjoy the tradition of making and flying kites during the festivities of the day.
Many towns will process with an image of their patron saint, or hold a special mass. In San Jose(a town in Peten, Guatemala) they process with three skulls from the church rumored to be the heads of the priests who founded the local Catholic church and converted the local inhabitants. You can read about some other interesting local traditions here!
El Dia de Los Muertos is a fun, artistic, and tasty holiday meant to remember the dead in a positive and joyous way. It’s interesting to compare it to the American tradition of Halloween. I can’t wait to see what it’s like when I arrive on the 2nd after most of the festivities have ended.
Stay tuned for my next blog post when I’ll be in Guatemala in person!!!
Thanks!
-Gina
