Okay, first of all, I discovered that it's actually called Dia de Muertos and NOT Dia de los Muertos. The latter is technically correct, but the official name in Mexico is sans los. A cool thing about traveling/living in other places is learning how to "un-Americanize" names and pronunciations (like Hawai'i).
It's also NOT the "Mexican Halloween," nor is it supposed to be a sad or scary time. It's actually a "celebration of life" where families gather to share stories, sing, dance, and enjoy the favorite foods of the deceased - so me & the little monster had a Mexican coke to honor my dad/papa, and I feel it was more authentic as Mexican Coke tastes like American Coke USED to taste when my dad started drinking it! 😁
On the eve of the festivities, DJ and I joined a mix of locals and expats to celebrate. A Haitian-American woman who moved here 5 years ago to open a restaurant and boutique hotel hosted with the Mexican husband she met and married here, along with her 12-year-old son. A couple who recently moved here from New Mexico(!) also joined, with their two kids (a 12-year-old girl and a 9-year old boy), and a couple of other locals.
Interesting bit about the expat couple: they fled the states after the orange turd wouldn't flush, and they planned to travel throughout Mexico and Latin America to identify a place to relocate. Oaxaca was their first stop, but they like it so much they've decided to stay here! This is like the gay expat couple I met in Chapala, who had a similar plan, but were so enamored of their first stop (i.e., Chapala), they decided to just stay there. A single mother of two we met in Chapala - same thing. All fled Trump, all planned to scope out mulitple places in Mexico, and all of them stayed in the first place they landed!
ANYWAY, after enjoying a meal and fellowship/story sharing, we went en masse to a few local shops to gather materials, flowers, food, etc. for a community altar. Everyone brought pictures of loved ones for the altar, and if you haven't yet, you can see pics of the one DJ and I did for my dad. Fun fact: there's some debate as to whether the Cempasuchil is actually a marigold - as most folks assume Dia de Muertos flowers are. Well, technically it is, but this one is native to Mexico - thus its importance for the holiday here.
After food and altar-building, we went on a field trip to a couple of large cemeteries, strolled around a local festival just getting started in a mural-heavy area (again, check my Facebook pics), a flower field just outside of town so we could gather more cempasuchil, and then an awesome experience at a local palenque where we put some of our just gathered flowers on their communal altar, got a demonstration of how mezcal is made (quite elaborate and time consuming), and then enjoyed a traditional Oaxacan chocolate drink and traditional Oaxacan tamale - chicken and mole! While I liked the Oaxacan tamale, I still prefer the more well known "standard" tamale - and still miss the ones from "Luis" in Chapala!
So did this experience make me fall in love with Oaxaca and put Mexico at the top of my retirement list? Tune in to my next blog post wherein I'll give the final verdict on Mexico after 6 months here. Tomorrow we're off to Ecuador after a pit stop in Colombia on the way down.
