October 2009

Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) isn’t just one day in San Miguel, it is many. It begins today, on what we call Halloween, around noon, although the town has been slowly gearing up for things for the past week. Around the churches and at the arts and crafts market next to the mercado, vendors have set up little booths where they sell an incredible selection of alfenique, the special sugar skulls and candies used to lure the dead back home.

A vendor selling alfenique in San Miguel de Allende. Photos by David Lansing.

A lot of the candies look like toys: baby blocks, bunnies, dolls, ducks, Disneyesque dogs. These are meant to entice home the angelitos, the little angels, the children who have died and are celebrated tomorrow on dia de todos santos—All Saints’ Day. It’s also a tradition here to buy a calaveritas de azúcar—a sugar skull—with the names inscribed on the forehead. So you’ll see little boxes of sugar skulls with pink or blue lettering for José or Maria or Juan. It’s not unusual to see a mother walking through the market with a child who will spot a calavera with his or her name on it and beg their mother to buy it for them.

Sugar dogs, pumpkins, and pigs for Day of the Dead.

The market is also filled with vendors selling pan de muerto, the traditional bread of the dead, made with egg yolks and orange water, topped with dough in the shape of human bones, as well as mole and sweet tamales. In fact, here in San Miguel, the indigenous people, the Otomi, who live out in the countryside, make a special sweet tamale, colored green or lavender or pink, just for the angelitos.

I like to walk the streets in the early evening during the dias de muertos celebrations hoping to catch a glimpse of a neighbor’s ofrenda, the special altars set up in a niche in the house or in the courtyard dedicated to dead relatives. Some are simple affairs: a small table covered in clean white linen with a cross in the middle or a statue of the Virgin, decorated with cempazuchitl, the yellow or orange marigolds that lead the dead back, a photo or two of the departed, and their favorite foods and drinks—tequila, beer, tamales, chiles, mole—and, if they were smokers, a pack of cigarettes.

An elaborate ofrenda in San Miguel.

Some are much more elaborate, featuring hundreds of alfenique in the shape of little corn, bananas, oranges, chiles, and gourds, as well as tableaus of the saints and crosses, decorated with both Christian and Aztec symbols, that are works of art in and of themselves.

So I go to the market and buy a few sugar skulls, some copal resin incense, a Cuban cigar, and a bottle of Presidente brandy and set up a little ofrenda on the table just inside the door in my house. I decorate it with fishing lures, a toy figurine of a rhinoceros, some good Spanish cheese, and a faded copy of a book I always travel with, The Sun Also Rises. My dia de muertos offering to Papa.

I needed to get some visa documents translated into official Spanish and so went to the Oficina Dobarganes on Correo yesterday afternoon where, for a modest fee, someone would translate a letter I needed to write to Migración telling them why I was requesting an FM3 card which would allow me to be in Mexico for longer than six months at a time.

It is not a simple thing to get an FM3. They need to know if your forehead is narrow, regular, or wide; your eyebrows scarce, bushy, or plucked; your chin oval, round, or square. They need to know how many languages you speak and what religion you are. Of course, in Mexico it is wise to just put Catholic.

Anyway, I went to get my letter translated and that’s where I ran into Albert, an elderly American with, I should say, a narrow forehead, bushy eyebrows, and a square chin. Albert was wearing an orange bolo tie over a worn yellow shirt and a rather threadbare black blazer. In a bit of a whisper, he suggested that were we to retire to a bench in the Jardín, he would be happy to write out my translation for a small “donation.”

A donation to who, I asked.

He smiled. “To me,” he said.

Albert waiting outside the translating offices of the Instituto. Photo by David Lansing.

Now I probably could have had someone at the Traducciones Dobarganes translate my letter for 150 pesos so it wasn’t like I was going to save anything by letting Albert do it (and who knew if he would even translate it correctly?), but I have to admit I was intrigued. I’d seen Albert around town. He seemed to move around a lot. Not necessarily doing anything but just wandering around at the Mercado or slowly walking up Santo Domingo to god knows where or wandering around in the Jardín. In fact, I imagine I’ve seen Albert every day since I’ve been here. Never sitting down anywhere. Always standing, as he was in front of the big wooden door of the translating offices, or just aimlessly wandering.

We sat down on one of the green wrought-iron benches in the park, Albert leaning forward as if ready to jump up at any moment and flee, and, before he could get to my translation, I asked him a few questions about himself. He rather nervously told me that he was originally from Michigan, although he hadn’t lived there in a long time.

Do you still have family there, I asked him.

Yes, grown children he told me, though it had been awhile since he’d heard from them. “They don’t know I’m here,” he said, his bushy eyebrows twitching. “It isn’t possible for them to know I’m here. That wouldn’t be good.” And then he looked at me with real fright in his eyes, as if I might be the one to betray his whereabouts to whoever or whatever it was he was running from.

Anyway, he wrote out my translation in very elegant handwriting and I made my donation. Then he seemed to relax just a little bit. I asked him how long he’d lived in San Miguel and he said a long time, and then told me two quick stories about life in San Miguel.

What with Halloween and the Katrina parade, there would be a lot of fireworks over the weekend, Albert said. Which meant that, undoubtedly, there would be fires. Did I know, he asked, that there were no fire hydrants in San Miguel and only a marginal volunteer fire brigade? I did not, I told him. “What do they do when a big fire breaks out?” I asked him.

“Mostly,” he said solemnly, “we remember it.”

Then he told me a story about a bruja who lived in the sierra outside of town. A bruja is a witch and San Miguel has a long tradition of brujas. In fact, tomorrow night, which is Halloween, has long been known as noche de brujas in San Miguel.

Anyway, Albert said that an old drunk bruja used to come down from the sierra in the morning and confuse the post office with a cantina that was right next door. Staggering into the oficina de correos, she would pound the marble counter and demand her tequila. The courteous post office employees always politely accepted her order and then ignored her. After awhile, she would leave, but not before putting a curse on Mexico as she left.

“But I haven’t seen her around for awhile,” Albert said. Then he quickly stood up and looked me very seriously in the eyes. “You’re moving into your dark days,” he said to me in a whisper. “I can tell. Dark days.”

And then he was gone, leaving me to wonder if he was foretelling my future or putting his own curse on me.

My street, Aldama, never looks more festive than this time of year when long enramadas de papel picado—those colorful strings of perforated tissue paper—are strung up from the entrance of Parque Benito Juárez up to the Casa Rosada Hotel, marking the end of the street.

Many of the other streets in San Miguel are also decorated with bright green, yellow, pink, and blue papel picado. But not all of the streets. So who decides which streets get the festive-looking flags and who puts them up? I have no idea. It just seems like one morning you get up and walk out your door and there are strings and strings of flags gently waving in the breeze.

The papel picados flap in the breeze along Aldama in San Miguel de Allende. Photo by David Lansing.

I’ve heard a couple of stories as to how the perforated flags got started. Some say that the indigenous people, 500 years ago, made the flags from the bark of fig or mulberry trees for use in religious ceremonies. Others say that during the 16^th century, Spanish galleons, laden with European goodies bound for the New World, used papel chino—Chinese tissue paper—wrapped around porcelain to protect it during the journey.

But here’s my favorite story, partially because it cannot possibly be true but also because it comes closest to revealing Mexico’s unique symbolic relationship with all things metaphorical. They say there was a very wealthy man who owned a shop in Guadalajara that sold fine things and that he was always cheating his clients by giving them less than they had paid for. Everyone knew he cheated them and told him so but he just couldn’t seem to help it. It was like he was addicted to being a bad man.

Eventually this way of living caught up to him and he was sentenced to prison. While he was in prison he thought about his life and vowed to become a better man. To remind himself of this vow, he started collecting scraps of paper and cutting them into various forms—a butterfly to remind him of freedom, the Virgin of Guadalupe to remind him of goodness, an ox to remind him of strength, and so on. When he completed one papel picado, he would string it next to the one before it. And so it went until he had a curtain of flags representing the discarding of his old life and the beginning of his new life. When he was finally freed from prison, he burst through this curtain and announced to his friends that he was a new man. And every year after that, on the anniversary of his release, he would design a curtain of papel picados and throw a big party for everyone he had ever cheated as a way to make amends. And others soon followed this tradition.

And that’s why there are enramadas de papel picado decorating Aldana street today. Or so I like to think.

A papel picado masterpiece of Frida Kahlo by Margarita Fick.

Of course, the papel picados decorating my street are just cheaply manufactured strings of plastic. But there are still some people who make their own from tissue paper. And the tradition is that when the Day of the Dead ends, the papel picados are left to fly in the open air until the rain reduces them to nothing. I like this image.

One of the masters of papel picados in San Miguel is Margarita Fick. What she is able to do with tissue paper is absolutely art. Just take a look at this papel picado she made of Frida Kahlo and some of her other works, which are collected by many, at her website, www.myspace.com/margaritafick.

Most mornings I walk up the cobblestones of Aldama, past the magnificent pink lady, La Parroquia, and through the Jardín to San Miguel’s covered market, Ignacio Ramírez. It is a very pleasant walk and there is always something interesting to see. For instance, in the cool shade of the lower portales are the old women selling flowers. They have buckets of fragrant tuberose and carnations, tall lilies and vivid roses, but, with dia de los muertos just a few days away, mostly what they sell today are the bright orange marigolds whose scent is said to lead the spirits home.

Flower sellers of San Miguel. Photos by David Lansing.

Perhaps it was the thought of the marigolds and the upcoming celebration of the Day of the Dead, but for some reason, instead of continuing on straight to the mercado this morning, I stopped in at the church next door, Templo de Nuestra Señora de la Salud.

The church of Nuestra Senora de la Salud in San Miguel de Allende.

There was a small group of peasant women sitting in front of a radiant ivory statue of the Virgin, framed by a pale blue background. They were praying the rosary out loud, holding their leathery hands over their eyes and exhaling each Santa Maria while rocking gently back and forth as they ran out of breath at the end of each prayer.

They wore dark rebozos and checkered aprons. While they prayed, several younger women brought their blanket-covered babies up to the Virgin, holding them out to her as if in offering. Many other women with their babies stood respectfully in line. When one woman finished offering up her child, another came up and did the same. Mother after mother offering up her child. Some touched the Virgin’s arm—lightly, gingerly, in supplication. Some placed a pink carnation or a red gerbera in her open palm.

I sat there in the back of the church, watching these women, young and old, who prayed with such fervor to this smooth, cold statue. A long, long time ago, I believed the way they believe. And I wish that I still had that faith. But I do not. And I am sure it is my loss.

In the afternoon, the old American ex-pats of San Miguel, most from Texas or California, bask in the Jardín like lizards.

There is a natural seating order along the green wrought-iron benches. No one sits in the first row facing the church, La Parroquia. Not in the afternoon when the sun hovers over its tallest spires, shining hotly in your face. In the second row, beneath the cool shade of the laurel trees, are the clusters of old men glancing at the local paper, Atención, or working on crossword puzzles or smoking a cigarette while silently watching the scene around them.

Their wives or girlfriends come and go, one off to look at the silver and turquoise bracelets at the joyerias on San Francisco, another to go pick up Sin-Bac at the Farmacia Aurora.

Women waiting in the Jardin. Photos by David Lansing.

When the women are done running their errands, they come back to the benches and debate with their husbands whether they are hungry enough at this early hour in the afternoon to get something to eat and, if so, whether they feel like comida at Posada Carmina or a sandwich at Pegaso or just a bowl of crema de poblano somewhere.

The uniformed school children passing through the jardín on their way home for their own comida stop at the green carts with the vinyl Coca-Cola covers and buy Fantas or chicharrones, doused in hot sauce, or bags of jicama sticks spiced up with a squirt of picante sauce and vinegar.

Photos copyright by David Lansing.

In the inner rows of the jardín, around the bandstand, sit the locals, the young working couples eating sandwiches, the old men wearing ranchera hats having their shoes shined, the women nursing babies, a rebozo over the child’s face, the grandmothers giving toddlers bits of churros to feed the dozens of pigeons.

Always changing; always the same.