DAY OF THE DEAD ALTARS ARE THE HEART OF HOLIDAY CELEBRATION

Altar Made for Frida Kahlo By Students

I love the symbolism and decorum evident in all Mexican holidays and celebrations and Dia de Los Muertos, also known as Day of the Dead, is no exception. It honors loved ones who've died, that much is clear. But I needed some fine tuning on the why's and wherefore's of the holiday. So I headed into Santa Barbara's La Calenda, a charming Mexican artisan shop, to talk to owner Esperanza Vargas. Vargas hails from Oaxaca, has lived in California thirty years, and has owned the shop in Santa Barbara for nine.

"When I was little, I think Dia de Los Muertos was more a cultural thing," she said. "Every year my mother would make the preparations. She would create a big, big altar called an ofrenda about two weeks before, and she would make the bread, which is very important, pan de muerto. In our pueblo, if people didn't bake themselves, they would look for someone to make the bread or go to the bakery. But with the baker there was a long wait because having the bread was essential. All the homes would make their own mole and chocolate. My mother would start three days before with her cooking preparations for the mole. It took that long. I asked her why do we do it?

Pan de Muerto

She said, "Mi hija, for angel babies that die, angelitos, God lets them see their families once a year and that's why we make everything they used to like. They come to visit us during these days, November 1 at midnight for babies, November 2 for adults, because we send them the smell of the foods they used to like, so they follow the smells. Also, it's for the family, but if someone's family did not make an altar, we put one for them along with ours.

"You see," she said, "God gave them permission to come visit and that's why they do it. But now, sadly, they are making it too ugly. The drug dealers are saying Dia de Los Muertos is to honor their Santa Muerte, but that's not the reason at all. The real reason they come is because they were given per-mission by God.

"November 2 is for adults and we make food and bring flowers we have at home, marigolds, and take them to the cemetery where they are buried and we spend time with our loved ones there."

Marigolds Grown for Dia de Los Muertos (Mexico Desconocido)

The History Channel states the holiday traces its earliest roots to the Aztecs in what is now central Mexico. Aztecs used skulls to honor the dead for three thousand years before Day of the Dead celebrations emerged. Although it is sometimes confused with Halloween because of the symbolic skulls, it is not related at all.

After the Conquest in the 16th century, the Catholic church moved indig-

enous rituals honoring the dead, originally in the summer with an entire month dedicated to the dead, to times that coordinated with Catholic dates for All Saints Day and All Souls Day, November first and second. That's how they came to be merged together.

Dia de Los Muertos came into being thanks to an Aztec festival dedicated to the goddess Mictecacihuatl, known as the 'lady of the dead.' It's said she watches over the bones of the dead and swallows the stars during the day.

Offerings for the dead consist of water, the loved ones' favorite food and drink, flowers (marigolds because of their intense color and strong smell to guide spirits back to the family altar), bread and other things that were important in the dead person's life. Sometimes paths strewn with marigold petals are made so the souls can easily find their way home.

Sugar Candy Skulls or Calaveras

Skulls like the ones placed on Aztec temples for rituals remain key to the tradition that honors life rather than mourns death. Though skeletons (calacas) and other trappings of death are key, the ancient holiday is viewed as part of the cycle of life, in a joyous celebration that embraces death. In Mexico the inevitability of death is accepted rather than feared and families come together to honor their ancestors. The skeletons came about in the 19th century in Mexico City when a social activist and cartoonist created La Catrina (elegant skull), a well-dressed skeleton, to protest the Mexican people's desire to look European. Catrinas dance and sing; flowers, fruit and candy decorate the altars. For two days death's morbid side is buried beneath music and remembrances. Today people dress up as La Catrina or paint their faces like skeletons as part of their Dia de Los Muertos celebrations.

La Catrina in La Calenda, Santa Barbara

The Nahuatl people of central Mexico believed the deceased traveled on a year-long journey to the land of the dead, or Chicunamictlán. The living would provide supplies, food and water, to aid them in their trek. This practice inspired the modern tradition of creating altars at one's home, ofrendas, as well as leaving offerings at their grave sites. Altars are the centerpiece of the celebration and offerings are inspired by the four elements—fire, candles; water, pitchers left for the thirsty; earth, traditional foods; and wind, the papel picado which allows souls to pass through due to their perforations.

Picado with Perforations for Soul to Pass Through

Papel picado, thin and colorful paper strung high to catch the wind, represents the delicate nature of life. And the sugar skulls, calaveras, are also essential. Decorative, they are placed on the ofrenda and given as treats.

Families gather to clean graves before the holiday, then come the day, they eat and tell stories around the tomb. Ancestors are honored with a variety of foods and drinks: the candy skulls or calaveras, pan de muerto, tamales and mole, pozole, tortilla soup, hot chocolate, atole and pulque to drink.

Painting Faces Like La Catrina

Photographs of the departed are front and center, surrounded by all the trappings of what the lost family member held dear in life. First and foremost, Dia de Los Muertos is a celebration of life that focuses on the connections that endure beyond death. It's a family time for joy, laughter, remembrance, and appreciation of the preciousness of life. 

Cemetery During Day of the Dead Ceremonies (By Smithsonian Magazine)

La Calenda Oaxacan Shop is located at 2915 De la Vina Street, Santa Barbara, and is open daily. For hours of operation, call (805) 845-3046 or check their website at lacalendasb.com.

If you enjoyed this post, check out  Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

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The Aztecs

BOHEMIAN BEACH CHIROPRACTOR IN MEXICO SAVES A KAYAKER'S DAY

Camping in the Baja

If you've ever traveled to Mexico, you know with a little initiative and luck, you can find anything you need there—anything. And by the same token, anything can happen. Host Ira Glass brought that point home in an episode of This American Life a few weeks ago. The topic was A Day at the Beach, and Shane DuBow shared a hilarious memory about a beach in Mexico with producer Alex Plumber. It's a doozie. 

Shane recalled an incident that took place while on a Mexico kayaking trip in Baja, California. He and his friends were on a month-long vacation to go sea kayaking in the Gulf of California. They were smack dab in the middle of nowhere.

Shane painted a picture of early Baja before the tourists arrived like this: "There's the desolate road, little beach communities and a handful of small tourist centers. But mostly what we were doing was finding deserted open beaches for camping. Most of the time there was nobody else around.  

"There were six or seven in our party. Some wanted to fish, others wanted to hang out and play cards. Some snorkeled. We slept outside a lot and it felt like we were 12-years old again, pretending to be Robinson Crusoe, living off the land. We carried all our own water and food, camping supplies, tents, sleeping bags and cooking equipment.

"We're in Baja, a week or so into the trip, and we're on a layover which means we're just camped somewhere and not trying to kayak. We'd been clamming all day, and out of the blue, my neck locks up. I can't turn my head to one side. This is bad for lots of reasons, but when you're kayaking, you have to be able to paddle and you gotta be able to use both arms and turn your head side to side.

"I'd had this occasionally over the years—it just happened to me periodically, maybe six times a year. It'd last for three or four days. We'd run into a little expat community on a beach nearby to where we were camping. These folks lived in campers and had set up little cantinas made from a tarp staked up by poles where they'd serve beers, and in our case, showed us how to clam. Afterwards they made us a clam feast.

Baja's Desert and Ocean

"So we went back to the guy that had taught us clamming, stopped by his camper. I asked him if there were any chiropractors nearby. I know, I know. What a ridiculous question because there was absolutely nothing nearby. He gets this look in his eye, sort of wistful, and says no, there's no chiropractor but there is a guy who's considered an amateur chiropractor who helps some of the locals. He lives on a boat two coves over from where you're staying. And if you go to this man, the guy tells me, he may help you. He calls himself Dr. Johnny Tequila.

Empowered by the possibility, Shane asks, "How do I get there? I don't want to miss it." The guy tells him he won't miss it. He grabs a bar napkin and a pen and sketches a rough outline of the coast and puts an X, as in X marks the spot. "That's where to find Johnny Tequila, just two coves over," he tells me. None of my friends wanted to go with me. They're all chilling out, playing cards.

"With my neck ache getting worse by the minute I realize I'll have to kayak by myself if I want to see this guy. My friends had started to tease me about my paddle stroke which was by this time one-armed and half-crippled and they're calling me "chicken wing," because of my neck.

"So I chicken wing for two coves worth, maybe a mile paddle, right close to shore, with the beach on my right and the open ocean to the left. While I'm chicken winging, at one cove over I look down at my napkin and it's all wet, so my map is destroyed. But I keep paddling, and there, at the second cove is a boat in the middle of this otherwise empty cove. It's not a harbor of any kind, no dock or anything man-made. Nothing around. It's docked in the water about 30 yards from shore.

"As I paddle closer I see it has a cabin. The mast is up, but not any sails. As I get closer and closer I can see around the mast and lined up are empty Cuervo Gold tequila bottles, but kind of orderly. That was the weird thing," Shane said. "You don't usually associate empty tequila bottles with order but these had been meticulously lined up, ringing the mast.

"Weird, I think. And here I am paddling up on a boat in the middle of nowhere with no one else around. I don't even know how to start. But from some place deep within, the word ahoy comes to me. Which I've never used before in normal conversation.

"Ahoy, ahoy," I say. And from out of the cabin comes a completely naked woman. She looks American, blond hair, tanned so deeply, it's like the tan that goes to your liver. Tan all the way through. Real muscley— her shoulders looked like she was probably a rafting guide in Colorado.

"She's completely naked and totally unfazed about being naked and just greets me and talks to me as if she were wearing clothes. And she's above me so I'm looking up at her being naked from my kayak, holding onto the side of the boat.

"Here I am in my kayak, and I say, 'Is Johnny Tequila here?' She's very nice and she says that he went into town for supplies but should be back shortly and why don't I just wait until he comes back. Eventually we see him, Johnny Tequila, on the beach near us. He's got a little row boat and he rows over to us. He looks exactly like her. He's got on shorts and he's got that tan. He's kind of muscley in his shoulders and chest and they both have kind of wild, bleached-out blond hair and real scruffy, maybe 30s, but the sun can make people look older, so who knows?

"I tell him my story and he's like, yeah, of course I'll help you. He says to follow him to shore. I chicken wing over and we both pull our boats up to the beach.

"Follow me," he says. And now we're going into the jungle, but it's not real jungle—it's dense scrub with bushes all around. Baja has lots of cacti that grows in the middle of nowhere with nothing else for miles. I follow him down a path and we come on to a clearing.

"There in the clearing is a table exactly like a massage table or chiropractic table you'd see in a chiropractor's office, where you can put your face in that center part that's open, and the neck part articulates and comes up. The real deal.  And a life-sized human skeleton is hanging from a tree, which I assume is a replica, but it looks like a skeleton. I'm checking this all out and thinking, a table in a clearing in the middle of the desert in Mexico, with a skeleton.

"He asks me to lie on my back, and I'm looking up at his face and his crazy hair. He's shirtless. So my shirtless chiropractor puts his hands around my neck in the middle of Mexico in a clearing with a skeleton. My amateur chiropractor now has my neck in his hands, and he gives me a chiropractic exam that resembles every other chiropractic exam I've ever received.

"Then he does an adjustment that passes for any other chiro adjustment I've had before. So I tell Johnny Tequila thank you for adjusting my neck. Can I pay you. And he says, No, I just do this to help people. There'll be no payment but if you ever see me in a bar, you can buy me a shot of tequila."

Alex, the producer, asks Shane if his neck was better. Shane says it's possible, but initially he has to chicken wing it back, but then over the next few hours he starts to feel much, much better. And the neck is okay.

"So," Alex asks, "when you think back on Johnny Tequila, is he an argument for chucking it all and moving to some quiet beach in a distant land or is he an argument against it?"

Shane responds, "He's one hundred percent an argument for. I can't believe you asked me that. A simpler life—just crack people's necks, drink tequila, sing in the cantina and go home to my naked lady. Did I not tell the story to make it seem good? To me it seemed great!"

An aside: Thirty years later after turning to Dr. Tequila on a remote Mexican beach for chiropractic help, Shane tracked the man down in a remote part of southwest Utah where he lives with the same woman, Cindy, who first introduced herself to Shane way back when, totally naked. Johnny is now close to 80. He told Shane his nickname came from a time when he was playing music at open air parties in his twenties out near the hidden hot springs in Death Valley. And he sent him a photo.

You really can find anything you need in Mexico. You just have to look for it.

Johnny Tequila Photo Sent To Shane

And have a smidge of luck.

If you enjoyed this post, check out  Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.