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Strange Mexican Traditions for Día de los Muertos

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Strange Mexican Traditions for Día de los Muertos

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MXCity | La Guía Insider de la Ciudad de México

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Celebrar a la Muerte es un acto irónico tan característico del pueblo mexicano. Es una especie de enfrentamiento entre la vida y un mundo de caos, miedo y vergüenza, cuya batalla reside en sobrevivir ante la idea de perder el control de todo lo que se tiene. Y la realidad es que esa batalla está perdida -y lo sabemos-. Así que optamos por utilizar el único recurso que nosotros, los mexicanos, tenemos para enfrentar al sometimiento de lo inevitable: la risa, el humor negro, el doble sentido, la fiesta.

Algunos dirán que la risa es sólo la evasión al miedo incontrolable. Cuando, ¿realmente que es evadirse de una emoción naturalmente humana? La risa es, más que un arma, la única herramienta que nos han enseñado a usar para enfrentar al oblivion. La risa es, más que un escudo placebo, un liberador de endorfinas que tranquiliza nuestras angustias y temores ante el apabullante descontrol. La risa es, entre otras prácticas netamente mexicanas, un recuerdo que vive atemporalmente en nuestra psique y nos permite entonces librarnos, aunque sea un poco, del miedo al abandono, al rechazo, al dolor y al olvido.

Al ser un pueblo que nacimos de la perversión- borderline -, donde nos enseñaron a amar al victimario -a homenajear al abusador-, aprendimos a desarrollar recursos basados en una definición distorsionada de sí mismo; aprendimos a someternos a través de la hilaridad, el festejo, la risa, la pomposidad, porque no había otra manera de sobrevivir a los miedos o a los abusos. Quizá por ello, para enfrentar a la Muerte con el único recurso que tenemos a la mano, usamos la hilaridad para disfrazar de mujer elegante a la calavera, endulzar a las calacas, comer panes que simbolizan los huesos y cráneos de los difuntos, decorar con colores llamativos y usar máscaras a lo largo de esta festividad del Día de muertos. Simplemente es más sencillo, más tranquilizante, más llevadero... Y hasta cierto punto, perverso.

Y hay más: otras prácticas, sencillamente raras, que podrían costarnos trabajo comprender su existencia, sus métodos, sus objetivos. Sin embargo quizá bastaría observarlas, experimentarlas, vivirlas dentro de su contexto para descubrir los simbolismos que permiten aliviar la angustia del pueblo mexicano. Es más, inclusive, hasta podríamos disfrutar de la enjundia con la que el narcisismo caracteriza a la muerte. Y qué mejor oportunidad, ahora con el Día de muertos tan cercano a estas fechas, para acotar las siguientes tradiciones culturales de los pueblos mexicanos:

1. En la prehistoria, los pueblos indígenas solían conservar los cráneos como trofeos y mostrarlos durante los rituales de sacrifico y así representar la muerte y el renacimiento. De eso, ya han pasado más de 3 000 años.

2. Existen sitios donde la costumbre obliga a un familiar dormir con el difunto a quien se le honra durante estas fechas.

3. En la Huasteca Potosina se celebran las fiestas de Xantolo, donde se acostumbra que los bailarines lleven máscaras hechas de madera, de plástico o inclusive hasta de luchadores.

4. Se llevan mariachis, banda norteña o músicos tradicionales a los cementerios, hogares o calles para que se canten las canciones favoritas del difunto. De esa manera el espacio cerrado, dirigido sólo a los familiares, se vuelve un lugar público y abierto en donde los músicos representan las animas vagando por el sitio.

5. Existen danzas en donde se representan cuentos y leyendas prehispánicos, por lo que se usa trajes de jaguares y otras deidades de la época a pesar de ser espacios mayoritariamente católicos.

6. Edificar un altar de muertos sobre las lápidas de los familiares muertos. Si bien es una conducta socialmente aceptada -y por tanto, no es rara per se -, en ocasiones se realiza durante los cuatro días de la festividad. Es decir, desde el 31 de octubre hasta el 3 de noviembre, los familiares se encuentran en el cementerio para iluminar sus caminos. Por tanto en estas fechas los panteones albergan música, comida y grandes fiestas.

La festividad de Día de muertos es un homenaje a la vida rindiendo homenaje a la muerte. Podríamos inclusive decir que se trata de una especie de recordatorio, en donde, el hablarle bonito a la muerte puede librarte de la soledad, la inexistencia y el olvido -al menos, por un tiempo breve-.
Twitter de la autora: @deixismj

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6 tradiciones raras mexicanas para celebrar el Día de muertos - MXCity | La Guía Insider de la Ciudad de México

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Decidimos disfrazar de mujer elegante a la calavera, endulzar a las calacas, comer panes que simbolizan los huesos y cráneos de los difuntos, decorar con colores llamativos y usar máscaras a lo largo de esta festividad del Día de muertos.

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Señor Jordan's Video about Possessive Adjectives

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Señor Jordan's Video about Possessive Adjectives

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So strange... so wonderful...

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The Aztecs, who probably originated as a nomadic tribe in northern Mexico, arrived in Mesoamerica around the beginning of the 13th century. From their magnificent capital city, Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs emerged as the dominant force in central Mexico, developing an intricate social, political, religious and commercial organization that brought many of the region's city-states under their control by the 15th century. Invaders led by the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés overthrew the Aztec Empire by force and captured Tenochtitlan in 1521, bringing an end to Mesoamerica's last great native civilization.

Early Aztec History

The exact origins of the Aztec people are uncertain, but they are believed to have begun as a northern tribe of hunter-gatherers whose name came from their homeland Aztlan, or "White Land" in the Aztec language of Nahuatl. The Aztecs were also known as the Tenochca (from which the name for their capital city, Tenochtitlan, was derived) or the Mexica (the origin of the name of the city that would replace Tenochtitlan, as well as the name for the entire country). The Aztecs appeared in Mesoamerica-as the south-central region of pre-Columbian Mexico is known-in the early 13th century. Their arrival came just after, or perhaps helped bring about, the fall of the previously dominant Mesoamerican civilization, the Toltecs.

Did you know? The Aztec language, Nahuatl, was the dominant language in central Mexico by the mid-1350s. Numerous Nahuatl words borrowed by the Spanish were later absorbed into English as well, including chile or chili, avocado, chocolate, coyote, peyote, guacamole, ocelot and mescal.

When the Aztecs saw an eagle perched on a cactus on the marshy land near the southwest border of Lake Texcoco, they took it as a sign to build their settlement there. They drained the swampy land, constructed artificial islands on which they could plant gardens and established the foundations of their capital city, Tenochtitlán, in 1325 A.D. Typical Aztec crops included maize (corn), along with beans, squashes, potatoes, tomatoes and avocadoes; they also supported themselves through fishing and hunting local animals such as rabbits, armadillos, snakes, coyotes and wild turkey. Their relatively sophisticated system of agriculture (including intensive cultivation of land and irrigation methods) and a powerful military tradition would enable the Aztecs to build a successful state, and later an empire.

The Aztec Empire

In 1428, under their leader Itzcoatl, the Aztecs formed a three-way alliance with the Texcocans and the Tacubans to defeat their most powerful rivals for influence in the region, the Tepanec, and conquer their capital of Azcapotzalco. Itzcoatl's successor Montezuma (Moctezuma) I, who took power in 1440, was a great warrior who was remembered as the father of the Aztec empire. By the early 16th century, the Aztecs had come to rule over up to 500 small states, and some 5 to 6 million people, either by conquest or commerce. Tenochtitlán at its height had more than 140,000 inhabitants, and was the most densely populated city ever to exist in Mesoamerica.

Bustling markets such as Tenochtitlan's Tlatelolco, visited by some 50,000 people on major market days, drove the Aztec economy. The Aztec civilization was also highly developed socially, intellectually and artistically. It was a highly structured society with a strict caste system; at the top were nobles, while at the bottom were serfs, indentured servants and slaves.

Aztec Region

The Aztec faith shared many aspects with other Mesoamerican religions, like that of the Maya, notably including the rite of human sacrifice. In the great cities of the Aztec empire, magnificent temples, palaces, plazas and statues embodied the civilization's unfailing devotion to the many Aztec gods, including Huitzilopochtli (god of war and of the sun) and Quetzalcoatl ("Feathered Serpent"), a Toltec god who served many important roles in the Aztec faith over the years. The Great Temple, or Templo Mayor, in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan was dedicated to Huitzilopochtli and Tlaloc, the rain god.

The Aztec calendar, common in much of Mesoamerica, was based on a solar cycle of 365 days and a ritual cycle of 260 days; the calendar played a central role in the religion and rituals of Aztec society.

European Invasion & Fall of the Aztec Civilization

The first European to visit Mexican territory was Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba, who arrived in Yucatan from Cuba with three ships and about 100 men in early 1517. Cordobars reports on his return to Cuba prompted the Spanish governor there, Diego Velasquez, to send a larger force back to Mexico under the command of Hernán Cortés. In March 1519, Cortes landed at the town of Tabasco, where he learned from the natives of the great Aztec civilization, then ruled by Moctezuma (or Montezuma) II.

Defying the authority of Velasquez, Cortes founded the city of Veracruz on the southeastern Mexican coast, where he trained his army into a disciplined fighting force. Cortes and some 400 soldiers then marched into Mexico, aided by a native woman known as Malinche, who served as a translator. Thanks to instability within the Aztec empire, Cortes was able to form alliances with other native peoples, notably the Tlascalans, who were then at war with Montezuma.

In November 1519, Cortes and his men arrived in Tenochtitlan, where Montezuma and his people greeted them as honored guests according to Aztec custom (partially due to Cortes' physical resemblance to the light-skinned Quetzalcoatl, whose return was prophesied in Aztec legend). Though the Aztecs had superior numbers, their weapons were inferior, and Cortes was able to immediately take Montezuma and his entourage of lords hostage, gaining control of Tenochtitlan. The Spaniards then murdered thousands of Aztec nobles during a ritual dance ceremony, and Montezuma died under uncertain circumstances while in custody.

European diseases like smallpox, mumps and measles were also powerful weapons against the local population, who lacked immunity to them. A Franciscan monk traveling with Cortés observed the impact of smallpox on the Aztecs: "They died in heaps...In many places it happened that everyone in a house died, and as it was impossible to bury the great number of dead, they pulled down the houses over them, so that their homes became their tombs." By 1520, smallpox had reduced the population of Tenochtitlan by 40% in just one year.

Cuauhtemoc, Montezuma's young nephew, took over as emperor, and the Aztecs drove the Spaniards from the city. With the help of the Aztecs' native rivals, Cortes mounted an offensive against Tenochtitlan, finally defeating Cuauhtemoc's resistance on August 13, 1521. In all, some 240,000 people were believed to have died in the city's conquest, which effectively ended the Aztec civilization. After his victory, Cortes razed Tenochtitla and built Mexico City on its ruins; it quickly became the premier European center in the New World.
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The Aztecs, who probably originated as a nomadic tribe in northern Mexico, arrived in Mesoamerica around the beginning of the 13th century. From their magnificent capital city, Tenochtitlan, the Aztecs emerged as the dominant force in central Mexico, developing an intricate social, political, religious and commercial organization that brought many of the region's city-states under their control by the 15th century.

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The Maya Empire, centered in the tropical lowlands of what is now Guatemala, reached the peak of its power and influence around the sixth century A.D. The Maya excelled at agriculture, pottery, hieroglyph writing, calendar-making and mathematics, and left behind an astonishing amount of impressive architecture and symbolic artwork. Most of the great stone cities of the Maya were abandoned by A.D. 900, however, and since the 19th century scholars have debated what might have caused this dramatic decline.

Locating the Maya

The Maya civilization was one of the most dominant indigenous societies of Mesoamerica (a term used to describe Mexico and Central America before the 16th century Spanish conquest). Unlike other scattered indigenous populations of Mesoamerica, the Maya were centered in one geographical block covering all of the Yucatan Peninsula and modern-day Guatemala; Belize and parts of the Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas and the western part of Honduras and El Salvador. This concentration showed that the Maya remained relatively secure from invasion by other Mesoamerican peoples.

Did you know? Among the earliest Maya a single language existed, but by the Preclassic Period a great linguistic diversity developed among the various Maya peoples. In modern-day Mexico and Central America, around 5 million people speak some 70 Maya languages; most of them are bilingual in Spanish.

Within that expanse, the Maya lived in three separate sub-areas with distinct environmental and cultural differences: the northern Maya lowlands on the Yucatan Peninsula; the southern lowlands in the Peten district of northern Guatemala and adjacent portions of Mexico, Belize and western Honduras; and the southern Maya highlands, in the mountainous region of southern Guatemala. Most famously, the Maya of the southern lowland region reached their peak during the Classic Period of Maya civilization (A.D. 250 to 900), and built the great stone cities and monuments that have fascinated explorers and scholars of the region.

Early Maya, 1800 B.C. to A.D. 250

The earliest Maya settlements date to around 1800 B.C., or the beginning of what is called the Preclassic or Formative Period. The earliest Maya were agricultural, growing crops such as corn (maize), beans, squash and cassava (manioc). During the Middle Preclassic Period, which lasted until about 300 B.C., Maya farmers began to expand their presence both in the highland and lowland regions. The Middle Preclassic Period also saw the rise of the first major Mesoamerican civilization, the Olmecs. Like other Mesamerican peoples, such as the Zapotec, Totonac, Teotihuacán and Aztec, the Maya derived a number of religious and cultural traits-as well as their number system and their famous calendar-from the Olmec.

In addition to agriculture, the Preclassic Maya also displayed more advanced cultural traits like pyramid-building, city construction and the inscribing of stone monuments.

The Late Preclassic city of Mirador, in the northern Peten, was one of the greatest cities ever built in the pre-Columbian Americas. Its size dwarfed the Classic Maya capital of Tikal, and its existence proves that the Maya flourished centuries before the Classic Period.

Cities of Stone: The Classic Maya, A.D. 250-900

The Classic Period, which began around A.D. 250, was the golden age of the Maya Empire. Classic Maya civilization grew to some 40 cities, including Tikal, Uaxactún, Copán, Bonampak, Dos Pilas, Calakmul, Palenque and Río Bec; each city held a population of between 5,000 and 50,000 people. At its peak, the Maya population may have reached 2,000,000.

Excavations of Maya sites have unearthed plazas, palaces, temples and pyramids, as well as courts for playing the famous Maya ball game ulama, all ritually and politically significant to Maya culture. Maya cities were surrounded and supported by a large population of farmers. Though the Maya practiced a primitive type of "slash-and-burn" agriculture, they also displayed evidence of more advanced farming methods, such as irrigation and terracing.

The Maya were deeply religious, and worshiped various gods related to nature, including the gods of the sun, the moon, rain and corn. At the top of Maya society were the kings, or "kuhul ajaw" (holy lords), who claimed to be related to gods and followed a hereditary succession. They were thought to serve as mediators between the gods and people on earth, and performed the elaborate religious ceremonies and rituals so important to the Maya culture.

Maya Arts and Culture

The Classic Maya built many of their temples and palaces in a stepped pyramid shape, decorating them with elaborate reliefs and inscriptions. These structures have earned the Maya their reputation as the great artists of Mesoamerica. Guided by their religious ritual, the Maya also made significant advances in mathematics and astronomy, including the use of the zero and the development of complex calendar systems like the Calendar Round, based on 365 days, and later, the Long Count Calendar, designed to last over 5,000 years.

Serious exploration of Classic Maya sites began in the 1830s. By the early to mid-20th century, a small portion of their system of hieroglyph writing had been deciphered, and more about their history and culture became known. Most of what historians know about the Maya comes from what remains of their architecture and art, including stone carvings and inscriptions on their buildings and monuments. The Maya also made paper from tree bark and wrote in books made from this paper, known as codices; four of these codices are known to have survived. They are also credited with some of the earliest uses of chocolate and of rubber.

Life in the Rainforest

One of the many intriguing things about the Maya was their ability to build a great civilization in a tropical rainforest climate. Traditionally, ancient peoples had flourished in drier climates, where the centralized management of water resources (through irrigation and other techniques) formed the basis of society. (This was the case for the Teotihuacan of highland Mexico, contemporaries of the Classic Maya.) In the southern Maya lowlands, however, there were few navigable rivers for trade and transport, as well as no obvious need for an irrigation system.

By the late 20th century, researchers had concluded that the climate of the lowlands was in fact quite environmentally diverse. Though foreign invaders were disappointed by the region's relative lack of silver and gold, the Maya took advantage of the area's many natural resources, including limestone (for construction), the volcanic rock obsidian (for tools and weapons) and salt. The environment also held other treasures for the Maya, including jade, quetzal feathers (used to decorate the elaborate costumes of Maya nobility) and marine shells, which were used as trumpets in ceremonies and warfare.

Mysterious Decline of the Maya

From the late eighth through the end of the ninth century, something unknown happened to shake the Maya civilization to its foundations. One by one, the Classic cities in the southern lowlands were abandoned, and by A.D. 900, Maya civilization in that region had collapsed. The reason for this mysterious decline is unknown, though scholars have developed several competing theories.

Some believe that by the ninth century the Maya had exhausted the environment around them to the point that it could no longer sustain a very large population. Other Maya scholars argue that constant warfare among competing city-states led the complicated military, family (by marriage) and trade alliances between them to break down, along with the traditional system of dynastic power. As the stature of the holy lords diminished, their complex traditions of rituals and ceremonies dissolved into chaos. Finally, some catastrophic environmental change-like an extremely long, intense period of drought-may have wiped out the Classic Maya civilization. Drought would have hit cities like Tikal-where rainwater was necessary for drinking as well as for crop irrigation-especially hard.

All three of these factors-overpopulation and overuse of the land, endemic warfare and drought-may have played a part in the downfall of the Maya in the southern lowlands. In the highlands of the Yucatan, a few Maya cities-such as Chichen Itza, Uxmal and Mayapán-continued to flourish in the Post-Classic Period (A.D. 900-1500). By the time the Spanish invaders arrived, however, most Maya were living in agricultural villages, their great cities buried under a layer of rainforest green.

Do The Maya Still Exist?

Descendants of the Maya still live in Central America in modern-day Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and parts of Mexico. The majority of them live in Guatemala, which is home to Tikal National Park, the site of the ruins of the ancient city of Tikal. Sixty percent of Guatemalans are of Mayan descent.
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Source

The Mayan Civilization. Stanford.edu.

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The Maya Empire, centered in the tropical lowlands of what is now Guatemala, reached the peak of its power and influence around the sixth century A.D. The Maya excelled at agriculture, pottery, hieroglyph writing, calendar-making and mathematics, and left behind an astonishing amount of impressive architecture and symbolic artwork.

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Who wants to go swimming? :)

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Learn Spanish by playing fun, simple Spanish video games. Our games teach grammar, vocabulary, and culture.

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Frida Kahlo's husband and major Mexican artist

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This is the alternative assignment to research

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Señora's Favorite Person

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Ballet Folklorico de Mexico - At London Coliseum July 22-25 2015

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Mexico's most celebrated dance company Ballet Folklórico De México returns to London in this brilliant visual and theatrical event for five performances only

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Google map - check the places we have studied! :)

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Link to all 5-1 vocab!