Day of the Dead — El Panteón Municipal

On the morn­ing of Dia de los Muer­tos, my mother (visit arranged to cor­re­spond with this fas­ci­nat­ing hol­i­day) and I went down the main ceme­tery in town. We had been told that it would be buzzing with activ­ity, but I don’t think we were pre­pared for how active it was. It seemed like nearly every grave was being attend­ing to by fam­ily which included clean­ing and dec­o­rat­ing with marigolds, stream­ers, and a wide vari­ety of other decorations.

The atmos­phere of this ceme­tery leaned much more towards jubi­lant than somber. The live music was a big part of this. Quite a few bands were wan­der­ing around the ceme­tery either look­ing for or just mov­ing between gigs. They var­ied in qual­ity and vol­ume, and although we tried to stay closer to the good mari­achi band, we always ended up near the loud­est 20-piece brass band. Although I was clearly out-of-place with my big cam­era, I didn’t want to be rude, so I tried to take pic­tures very dis­creetly, espe­cially of the bands play­ing graveside.

Around noon, we went just out­side the gates for lunch and pop­si­cles. When we went back in after­wards I thought that I would take a few more crowd shots and do some people-watching, but it was just too crowded. So, we headed on with our day, which turned out very well because then we went to see all the Catri­nas at the con­tests (and now 2 posts ago).

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