Human Flower Project
Flowers Break through Barrier to the Spirit World
Across South Texas and much of Mexico, El Dia de Los Muertos turns loss into festivity with flowers of reunion.
Tonight there will be vigils in cemeteries all across South Texas and Mexico, as Latino families observe Day of the Dead, El Dia de Los Muertos.
This celebration as practiced today in South Texas bundles Aztec ancestor worship, Roman Catholic ritual, Halloween mischief, and schoolroom cultural history with sheaves of personal and pop cultural layering. Sacred, secular or outright silly, all observances involve flowers aplenty.
Many South Texans, like Liz Zamarripa Saenz of San Antonio, visit the family burial ground throughout the year, but All Souls is a special time. Saenz and her husband Roy cleaned the big grave marker, tidied up and decorated. This year Saenz chose her favorite colors, two big pots of golden chrysanthemums to honor her parents and five smaller chysanthemum plants, all shades of purple, to represent their five children. Around the Zamarripa headstone stand five poles covered with paper flowers and streamers that loop in the wind.
Soon her mother’s oldest friend arrives with a pot of silk cyclamen that is given a place of honor. Then Liz and Roy leave for Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, where they’ll decorate the Saenz family plot.
Perhaps older than the custom of grave decoration is the memorial ofrenda, or altar, where the photos of loved ones are festooned with marigold garlands and surrounded by favorite foods, and beverages. There may even be a package of smokes. Traditionally, these offerings, as well as candles and the spicy scent of marigold, were thought to guide the spirits of the dead back home, making All Souls a supra-earthly reunion.
In more recent years, the custom has been adopted by arts groups, activitists, and schoolteachers hoping to impart a vivid lesson in pre-Columbian culture. “It’s been commercialized,” Liz Saenz says, “but unfortunately or fortunately, it makes no difference to us. We’ve been coming forever.”
For more on Day of the Dead celebrations around the U.S. see these stories from San Francisco, Phoenix, and even Fort Wayne, Indiana.