Mexican Immigration and Satanic Imagery
September 6, 2011
A READER FROM ARIZONA writes:
Regarding your post on Satanic imagery on children’s clothing, Mexican culture has us beat by a long way on this “symbolism” beginning with the Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead, which may have existed in Indigenous cultures. There are skulls and skeletons everywhere and it is not confined to that particular celebration. The obsession with skeletons permeates the culture. Across the line and in Mexican shops this side of the border the things are pervasive. Clothing, folk art and every type of object are covered with them.
What began as a Catholic remembrance of the dead on November 1st and 2nd, has become a cult of the skeleton with Mexicans and Gringos alike. Even traditional religious scenes have been adapted in the Hispanic cultures to the south.
There is also a cult of “Saint Death” worshiped by Mexicans and co-opted by the drug lords in Mexico.
Believe me that to retain millions of illegal Mexicans and South Americans is to import this, not the Catholicism some imagine. It is the poor who tend to adopt this type of bastardization of everything holy. It is the Catholic Church (or Organizations and Bishops who have not had the name Catholic taken away from them) here that is promoting the “acceptance and retention” of this here also. Read and weep.
— Comments —
Joe Long writes:
The skull is a common Christian motif of the past, emphasizing mortality (but, because of Ezekial’s vision, also a symbol in a sense of bodily resurrection). When Hamlet contemplates poor Yorick’s skull, he is right in line with this tradition – and the wonderful old Southern shaped-note hymns (in the eerie old Celtic scale) included numerous meditations upon death, one referring to “heaps of dust and bones” and reminding the singer that “these once were strong as mine appear, and mine must be as they”. (“Make them laugh at that,” suggests Hamlet. Reading the scary old hymn – which ENDS with the conclusion of mortality, by the way – resolution presumably to be offfered by the sermon – I couldn’t help but wish it could be thrown upon the PowerPoint projector amongst the “worship choruses”)
These traditions were not merely “whistling past the graveyard” as the combinations of skulls and pink hearts appear to be, or as the Mexican Day of the Dead looks to be (at least from my remote cultural vantage point). Nor were the skulls and bones generally in massive numbers (an adolescent statement that “all of YOU are going to die!”) but confronted more personally (“Wait a minute, I am going to die!”).
Laura writes:
The skull, or the skull and crossbones, doesn’t always have demonic connotations. But when it is used casually as a form of decoration, it celebrates death and desecration of the body. It rids people of the wholesome horror they should feel toward the ghoulish.
As Marian Horvat wrote: “The final goal of the Devil is to present himself as horrendous as he actually is, and be accepted and adored as such.”
Emily LeVault writes:
I was recently catching up on your posts and the article about Mexican Immigration and Satanic Imagery caught my eye. I find the whole discussion quite interesting but wanted to interject just a bit of personal experience.
I spent my high school years in El Paso, Texas not even a stones throw away from Juarez, Mexico. During that time I had the honor of experiencing three different Dia de los Muertos celebrations. While the decorations used and the ofrenda seem ostentacious (like the culture as a whole is “whistling past the graveyard”) the holiday is anything but. Most families (emphasis on “most”, because there is an unfortunate lot that make it seem like just another party) take the day to remember their relatives who have passed away died, celebrate their ancestors, and spend a very large portion of the day in Catholic Mass praying for mercy in the future when they die. More recently, during the Day of the Dead alters and ofrendas have been given in honor of the soldiers who have died in Iraq and the 9/11 victims. I was in El Paso in November 2001 and the immense out pouring of respect and remembrance was chilling; American flags covered altars made outside of cemeteries, along with photographs of the victims, tons and tons of flowers, letters pinned everywhere and women sometimes kneeling around the altars for hours praying for the souls. The holiday continues for three days with celebrations of the small souls that have died, Dia de los Muertos Chiquitos on 1 November, Dia de los Muertos on 2November and finally, All Saints Day, which is a day to celebrate the lives (mortal and eternal) of all souls.
Over the holiday, the food is wonderful and the catrinas (skeleton dolls) are beautiful, and the whole day is, indeed, a celebration. But, it is a celebration of lives that were lived and then given to the Lord and lives that are continuing in the tradition of their families. There is no crying during the celebration because it is widely held that the souls return to visit the families and their path back to our world “must not be slippery with tears”. But, somehow every part of the celebration is touched by a heavy dose of sobering humility.
If I may make one more observation, the Mexican culture is very much the same as American culture; there are people who have traditional values, heterosexual marriages, two-parent homes where the father works, and they attend church as a family and there are people who have degenerated from the traditional model that treat everything like just another excuse to throw a party and, frankly, are ruining it for everyone.
I sincerely hope the Dia de los Muertos, as a religious tradition and family holiday, sticks around for a very, very long time and isn’t bastardized by Ed Hardy any further.
Art writes from Texas:
I agree with Emily LeVault. I think we should acknowledge the Day of the Deads true origin and purpose, and remember that it was meant to be like All Souls Day. The main problem is the way that this aspect of Hispanic culture is being misappropriated by radicals. One can see at art museums and galleries that many artists here are heavily enamored of Chicano activism, and desire to see South Texas imitate Southern California.
