The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
Remembrance with resonance
Discover Day of the Dead celebrations in Mazatlan, on country’s coast
Decoration Day, which in 1970 became our Memorial Day, bears some resemblance to Mexico’s Day of the Dead. For both holidays, graveyards are spruced up and time is set aside to contemplate and pay tribute to those who have gone before us.
In this country, Memorial Day is dedicated to remember those who have died in military service, while in Mexico all those who have passed to the great beyond are remembered by families.
Insight into the Day of the Dead, aka Dia de los Muertos, came on my October visit to Mazatlan, a colonial city along Mexico’s Pacific Coast lined with sandy beaches and famous for its sports fishing and Spanish-language schools. Mexico’s Baja Peninsula is just across the Gulf of California from Mazatlan with an overnight ferry to La Paz taking about 15 hours.
I was among international media invited to the 23rd annual Fiesta Amigos, set to showcase Mazatlan against the Dia de los Muertos holiday backdrop. I jumped at the chance, and, within days, I was aboard an American Airlines flight to Dallas, where I met another flight headed to Mazatlan.
Mazatlan’s population is now about a half-million, a huge leap in growth since my last visit on a shore excursion in the late 1980s.
Cruise ships still call there, but now it’s a favored wintertime destination for expats, especially those from California. Many have winter homes in stylish gated condominium communities or stay in one of the city’s 1,200 guest rooms.
The Dia de los Muertos celebration was getting underway when I arrived on Oct. 30, with people colorfully attired in feathers and bright colors and grinning through toothy skeleton masks painted on their faces.
The celebration is observed in other Latin countries but is said to have originated in Mexico more than 3,000 years ago with the Aztecs. When the Spanish arrived in the 1600s, they considered it to be sacrilegious.
More folks around the world likely are now familiar with Dia de los Muertos thanks to last year’s “Coco,” a hit film from Pixar Animation Studios that was set in Mexico at the time of the holiday. In early March, “Coco” was awarded the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Observance isn’t uniform across Mexico but is more common in the country’s Southern and Western states where Aztecs lived.
It’s a three-day holiday that’s embraced and celebrated these days, starting with families going to graveyards, where their children are tasked with helping to sweep and clean up grave areas and place flowers around them.
At homes and restaurants, altars to the dead are constructed with candles and foods surrounding portraits of family and founders.
By evening, families return to picnic at the gravesites, sharing stories of the beloved relatives who have departed. The mood is celebratory, not somber. Typical foods include the sugary, almost donut-like, pan de muerto (bread of the dead) and sugar skulls.
After being advised to dress all in white, our group was honored to be included in the famous Callejoneada strolling through the colonial district that concluded at a festive dinner outdoors on the malecon — the 12mile walkway along the sea.
Mazatlan was settled beginning in 1531. Today, its downtown colonial district on streets around the central Machado plaza is lovely, with beautifully restored buildings, sidewalk cafes and a lively nightlife. Its historic district is 26 blocks.
Unique to Mazatlan are the pulmonarias, golf-carts made street-legal that serve as taxis throughout town.
We had tickets at the lovely Teatro Angela Peralta, a lush 1860 theater, to see a musical tribute to Pedro Infante, a Mexican singer and film star who is an idol in Mexico, much like Frank Sinatra is in this country.
On another day, a road trip to the rural village of El Quelite showed us a town little changed by the 21st century.
Roosters roamed the streets, dogs dozed in the middle of the dirt road and cactus sprouted from neglected tile roofs.
Twenty miles north of Mazatlan, just across the Tropic of Cancer between the Sierra Madre mountains and the Pacific ocean, El Quelite is a riverside village with lush flora and fauna. It was here that we visited a small cemetery where villagers were preparing graves for the Dia de los Muertos celebrations.
A delightful lunch at El Meson de los Laureanos, famous throughout this part of Mexico, brings many people to El Quelite, where they dine on traditional fromscratch cooking among bright artworks in what once was the home of a local physician-turned-restaurateur.
Opened in 1998 by Dr. Marcos Osuna, its dining rooms are indoors and out, with roosters, goats, a burro and chickens roaming among the diners.
A dancing horse performed for onlookers just after we’d finished our dessert as a 4-foot iguana looked down from its perch atop a nearby wall. On Sundays, the restaurant accommodates about 2,000 people, so reservations are a must.
Our tour by Pronatours also took us to a tequila distillery surrounded by a cactus fence, where we discovered tequila has as many variations as wine.
We also made a brief stop outside a ranch where fighting cocks were raised.
Each rooster was leashed and had its own doghousestyle dwelling separated from its neighbors. Cock fighting is legal in Mexico.
We also visited a fish market just a block from the sea where entire rows were devoted to a staggering array and variety of shrimp.
This part of the coast is famous for its shrimp, which highlight almost every menu.
Fishermen at the edge of the sea also sell their catch from shore, where they’ve landed their boats.
At one fish stand, the anglers encourage visitors to walk close to the surf line and hold a bit of fish skyward on a pointed stick, where frigate birds — with their 7-foot wingspans — swoop down and take it.