View From Casita Colibrí

Last night, throughout the streets of the city, the living began welcoming the dead.

Like the Guelaguetza desfile of delegations, Oaxaqueños and tourists (foreign and domestic) crowded the sidewalks along the Magna Comparsa Oaxaca 2017 route — from the Cruz de Piedra, down García Vigil, left on Allende, right on Macedonio Alcalá, right on Independencia, and into the Alameda.

With bands leading the way, catrinas in regional dress and dancers in traditional muerteada attire whirled and twirled, high-stepped and jumped, and moved and grooved their way through the streets.

With earthquakes and hurricanes and now the resumption of the zócalo plantón (occupation) and bloqueos (blocades) of roads into and out of the city by Sección XXII of the teachers’ union and their allies, Oaxaca and Oaxaqueños needed to party-down in joyous abandon — and they did!

Día de Muertos observances are different in the indigenous villages — the mood is more formal and each village has customs and rituals that tradition dictates must be followed.  But the bottom line in ciudad and pueblo is to provide a welcome worthy of both the living and the dead.  The celebrations have only just begun…