Death in Mexico

Abstract

One of the more unique events in Mexican culture is the celebration of the Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Most world cultures have some form of ancestor worship or remembrance ceremonies. But Mexico’s Día de los Muertos celebrations enjoy massive, cult-like, popular participation. The idea of the importance of death imagery in Mexican art, literature, and history is a given in Mexican culture. However, the persistence of death themes has not been noted as the definitive running current within the Mexican national cinema. Perhaps because of the heroic period of the Mexican cinema in its golden age of the early sound period, interpretation has focused on the challenge of establishing a separate sense of Mexican identity in the face of the legacy of Spanish rule until independence in 1821 and successive foreign interventions and wars from the Mexican-American War 1846–48, the French intervention of 1862–67 or the Revolution of 1910–20 when class and ethnic divisions exploded into an extended and debilitating civil war.