Mexico City festivities rooted in centuries-old fondness for skeletons

MEXICO CITY — During last year’s Day of the Dead celebrations, a vibrant pageant of skeletal forms stretches along the wide avenue of Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma. Senoritas wearing huge skull masks shimmy along in colorful skirts while Mayan and Aztec warriors, dressed in leopard skins and wearing black and white makeup, beat drums and gesture exuberantly with spears and clubs.

The sprawling Mexico City parade — the capital will hold two big ones this year, Oct. 27 and Nov. 2 — was inspired by a fictional version depicted in a 2015 James Bond movie. The boisterous procession is a relatively recent addition to the festivities surrounding Day of the Dead, and it reflects a centuries-old fascination with skulls and skeletons.

“The roots of Day of the Dead go back to pre-Hispanic Mexico,” says archaeologist Gary Feinman, curator of Mesoamerican anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago.

Celebrated for several days leading up to Nov. 2, Day of the Dead might more accurately be termed Days of the Dead, as the traditional holiday starts Oct. 31, with the three-day event commemorating the brief and honored return of those who’ve died. But images of skulls and skeletons have long been woven into the everyday fabric of Mexico’s traditional culture. Throughout the country are constant reminders that life is brief, and death is the other side of life.

Here are some places in Mexico City where the enduring fascination with skeletons lives on during Day of the Dead and well beyond.

Catrina and ancient Aztecs

In Mexico City, the Day of the Dead parade passes by the Diego Rivera Mural Museum. The museum’s centerpiece is Rivera’s massive “Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Central,” a mob scene of Mexico’s national leaders, poets and politicians, heroes and villains. It’s a surreal homage to the city’s past and present. In the dead center of this brilliantly colorful canvas is Catrina, the ladylike skeleton dressed in Victorian finery. She’s the most popular of all the calaveras, the happy, cavorting bony folks popularized by artist José Guadalupe Posada. Catrina’s prominence in Mexican culture is undisputed: She’s the first lady of skeletons.

GETTY Mexico City only recently began holding elaborate parades tied to the holiday after a fictional version was depicted in a 2015 James Bond film.

GETTY A baker tends to batches of pan de muerto, or “bread of the dead,” during last year’s Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico City.