Dia de Los Muertos - Calpulli Party

On Monday, the first of the two major days for the Dia de Muertos holiday, we both caught the bus up to Calpulli for their Dia de Los Muertos party. I was excited not just to see the party, but also to figure out where exactly Erica had been going all this time and to meet the people there she had been talking about. Sadly, although we remembered the camera, I forgot the battery, so we don't have any pictures to share.

When we first arrived, Felipe and the Caluplli teachers were still setting up for the fiesta, so we pitched in where we could. Erica painted many, many faces - mostly vampires (vampiros), devils (diablos) and witches (brujas), although there were a few other random costumes, including a very scary and very energetic demon-monk who spent most of the afternoon chasing three vampires in and out of the room with outstretched arms and legs and a delightful snarl. Not as adept with kids or paint as the lovely Erica, I put my talents to use moving tables and chairs, then spent the rest of prep time reading books with various vampires and witches who were too tired to run anymore.

The party itself started out with a grand parade throughout the neighborhood, with stops at various children's houses to ask for goodies. The kids would sing one of several different songs - the one I could make out most clearly was about skeletons leaving their graves and engaging in different activities, like eating ice cream, at various chimes of the clock - and afterwards the serenaded parent would deliver up a bag of oranges or peanuts or candy. The kids seemed to enjoy themselves, and were also pretty well worn out by all the hiking, which included a trip up and down the steepest stairway I've seen yet in Mexico (including those at Monte Alban, where steepness seemed to be almost the epitome of quality Zapotec stair-making). Once we returned to the school, the goodies were assembled on the already-overflowing altar, after which Felipe regaled everyone with a very long ghost story while the other teachers passed out bread, sweet tamales and hot chocolate.

At the very end, the kids all lined up (by height, roughly, although in the excitement there was some mixing around) and received a handful of fruit, nuts and candy from the altar. Then as a ceremonial last act as a Calpulli teacher, Erica got to pick two names at random from the class list to receive the sugar skulls. It was a great time and I was glad to get to see the school and meet the teachers and some parents before we left town.