may-2010

TRAVEL MEXICO
FACING PAGE:
Enjoying a walk in
butterfly country
RIGHT: Local people
go to church on
horseback on the
Day of the Dead
BELOW: An old
church in Patzcuaro
now used as
a library
corn-pith fi gures in tiny wooden coffi ns. On the nearby
lake, fi shermen are working overtime, casting for pescado
blanco with their distinctive nets shaped like butterfl y wings.
Tourists, too, are descending on Michoacán, the ‘Land of
the Fishermen’, in their thousands. The Tarascans – or
Purepecha, as they call themselves – are famous for their
‘Noche de los Muertos’ rooted in an ancient pre-Columbian
cult of the dead. In the cemeteries around Patzcuaro and on
the islands of the lake itself, they hold graveside vigils,
enticing the souls of their loved ones back to earth with the
scent of wild marigolds and bowls of smoking incense made
from the resin of the oyamel tree. As night descends, the
celebrants light a pathway for the spirits with candles, laying
36 Holland Herald FREE
tablecloths over their graves and d ffêting
them with a feast of their
favourite food and drink.
In the days before the Spanish Conquest, when the Kingdom of
Michoacán covered a few hundred square kilometres, the Purepecha
celebration for the dead lasted for two months. When Franciscan
missionaries began mass conversions of the Purepecha in the 16th
century, however, they absorbed the ‘pagan’ festival into the
Christian calendar, squeezing two months into the two days of All
Saints and All Souls. The timing brought the two beliefs together in
a way the Christians could never have envisaged. The Catholic ‘Day
of All Saints’, known in Mexico as the ‘Dia de los Inocentes’,
honouring those who had led a blameless life or who had died as
children, fell on November 1 – the day the Monarchs reappeared