Happy Day of the Dead
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 11.01.07 | 12:18 PM ET
As they do each year on Nov. 1 and 2, Mexicans are celebrating Day of the Dead festivities with sugar skulls and marigold-laden offerings to their ancestors, but some places are attracting more media attention than others. “All eyes are on Día de los Muertos as the holiday that brings visitors back,” said Oaxaca resident and Planeta editor Ron Mader in the San Jose Mercury News. Oaxaca has been a favorite destination for travelers marking the holiday, but according to the Mercury News, visitors have been slow to return after last year’s unrest. Hotel bookings are way down. That’s bad news for Oaxaca—Day of the Dead bookings were down last year, too.
Meanwhile, other Mexican cities continue to see visitors. Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle featured an overview of places in Mexico observing the holiday, including Mérida, Mexico City and Pátzcuaro in the state of Michoacán. I’ve made Day of the Dead trips to Oaxaca and Pátzcuaro—the former was great, I found, but the latter was a mess.
While the Day of the Dead remains popular in Mexico, an increasing number of Mexican kids are celebrating Halloween with costumes and candy, much to the chagrin of the Catholic church. Interestingly, the holiday is sometimes observed on Nov. 2, timed not with Halloween in the U.S. but with Day of the Dead festivities.
Reports the Los Angeles Times:
Like baseball and fast-food restaurants, Halloween is one of those U.S. cultural products that has inexorably worked its way into Mexican life. And just as the local McDonald’s outlets dispense packets of jalapeño sauce for their customers’ Big Macs, people here have taken Halloween and given it a Mexican touch.
When Mexico City children go door to door dressed in costumes and ask for candy, it isn’t necessarily on Oct. 31. Many children here will seek their treats on Friday of this week, when Mexicans mark the Day of the Dead.
Related on World Hum:
* Picnicking with Los Muertos
* When Tourists Attack
* In Oaxaca, a Different Kind of Day of the Dead
Related on TravelChannel.com
* Bizarre Foods World Travel Guide: Mexico
Photo by Dan.. via Flickr, (Creative Commons)
Email to friend
Twitter
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! Buzz
Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
Ron Mader 11.02.07 | 7:17 PM ET
First the good news—it’s hard to get a hotel room in Oaxaca. Not impossible, but we haven’t seen hotels and apartments this full since the spring of 2006.
Second, an invitation. As part of the festivites this year I decided to create a collaborate photo group. We already have more than 100 pictures from 40 members. So if you have photos you’d like to share from 2007 Day of the Dead celebrations wherever they take place, join the group online
http://www.flickr.com/groups/511783@N24