In my morning Spanish class, Tayde brought in a bunch of books about anthropology and art and we talked about the role of death in Mexican culture. I can’t yet fully articulate it, but there is a strong cultural difference in the way Mexicans and US Americans think about death. Death is a bit more present here; it isn’t as taboo as it is in the US. People visit the graveyard fairly frequently, and Dia de Muertos is a big holiday (technically two days) for remembering and celebrating the dead. In Mexican artwork, the skeleton is a sort of national mascot and appears in works throughout the past century, but in a sort of satirical way. A lot of famous Mexican novels are about ghosts. Comparatively, it seems like US culture doesn’t really talk about death much, and I think that makes it harder deal with when it inevitably arrives. I’ll probably flesh out (ha!) these ideas more in the coming weeks. Dia de Muertos is coming soon (November 1 and 2).
After classes today, Sherrill, Luzma, and I went to Gina (the school directors) ‘s house to celebrate San Sebastian’s Day. To the best of my understanding, San Sebastian’s Day is not a day, but the 20th of every month, plus like two-and-a-half weeks in January. I’m still not sure what he did to receive so many holidays, but it must have been pretty cool. Gina and her family live in a large house, on what is essentially a good-sized park. Several generations of their family are involved in business law. Upon arrival, we were ushered into a small church (on their yard), where the family and their friends recited a bunch of prayers. Somehow Sherrill and I ended up in the front row, clueless. After that we had quesadillas and hot chocolate, with Gina, her husband, and Ginita, although it seemed the family had already eaten before we arrived. Gina’s two youngest kids (Xavier and Rodulfo) are in my classes, but they were acting shy; both had friends over and seemed confused to see me in person (fair enough, they’ve previously only seen me in Zoom). We chatted with the older family members for about two hours, then left. All in all it was a nice time. I can’t always keep up with the speed of the conversations in Spanish well enough to chime in, but I can understand the gist what’s going on and laugh at the appropriate times.
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