Foreign and local tourists attracted by the Day of the Dead celebrations they flocked to the center of Mexico City, to contemplate the offerings dedicated to the deceased in the main public square of the country.
Visitors toured altars decorated with chocolate skulls and freshly cut marigold flowers around the Zócalo, a bustling esplanade erected in the heart of the ancient Aztec city Tenochtitlán.
The Offerings in the capital’s Zócalo they are part of a tradition that combines Catholic rituals with the pre-Hispanic belief that the deceased return once a year from the underworld.
“In everyone’s culture is the fear of death and here is to see what they celebrate that, it is something that breaks with your beliefs, “said Miguel Torres, a tourist from Colombia, with his face and lips painted in black and white colors emulating death.
“That is the important thing about knowing new cultures and seeing that death is a new stage and that sooner or later it must come for everyone.”
Adorned with the traditional “bread of the dead”, as well as candles, fruit and corn, the altars are also decorated with living portraits of the deceased who are honored. Tourists posed for photos alongside replicas of white skulls painted with images of flowers.
“The part of the skulls, the shamanic part that comes down from that, it seems very deep to me, like it goes to the roots of what the meaning of death is,” said Dayan Meléndez, an American tourist from Colorado.
“It gives me a lot of emotion, I think we are reborn indigenous culture“.
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx