Day of the Dead, Oaxaca

A SPLENDID RECEPTION IN TEOTITLAN DEL VALLE

The people of Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, thirty kilometers from the state capital, are widely recognized as exemplary hosts, and the souls who visit on Day of the Dead receive a truly royal reception. Preparations for their welcome are in the making for days, and beginning October 31, the villagers are already attending spirits.
The first to arrive are the angelitos – the souls of dead children – on November 1. All Saints’ Day, given that angels and saints have much in common, even residing in the same heavenly abode. They depart just after the first adults begin arriving from the “other world” at 3 p.m. the same day, officially the souls take leave at 3 p.m. on November 2, but should that day fall on a Sunday – the day liturgically reserved for the Lord – the spirits must simply wait and return on November 3. The normally industrious town of Teotitlan comes to a grinding halt during these fiestas. Antonia Ruiz warns thar, “No one should work while the spirits are still visiting”.



CONSTANT COMPANY AND KIND WORDS

It is mid-day, November 1, and many years have passed since Antonia Ruiz lost her last child. This spirited, compact woman speaks form first-hand experience as she has buried five of her eleven children. She leads me past the newly renovated room where the altar has been set up, across the porch and into her daughters’ bedroom. I am initially perplexed to be moving away form the living room, but as we enter into the cool darkness a small altar emerges. Antonia explains that this was the original living room in the home built by her husband’s parents forty years ago. This room had housed the altar until 1980 when Antonia and her husband, Félix built a new living room. She says she still maintains this small altar because it was here, in this room, that the wake was held when her own children died. This is the place they know. This is the place they come back to. “We receive the spirits here,” explains Antonia while her daughter Reina takes down the offerings left on the altar for the children’s spirits: peanuts and pecans, tiny egg loaves, miniature clay cups filled with hot chocolate used for making this essential beverage.



“While the angelitos are here we often hear the clinking of ceramics coming from this room,” Reina tells me, “ the same sound made when you take a drink and place the cup back in the saucer.”
The same afternoon in another house-hold in Teotitlan del Valle, Doña Clara Ruiz is already busy attending to four visitors in her living room when another couple arrives. On a day like today, whit so many people coming and going, she has left the front door open.

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