290 animal, vegetable, miracleit from me to critique an opportunity to dress up and beg free candy, but I
prefer Dia de los Muertos. It’s not at all spooky. It’s funny and friendly.
Most of what’s known about religious practices in pre- Hispanic Mex-
ico has come to us through a Catholic parish priest named Hernando
Ruiz de Alarcón, one of the few who ever became fl uent in the Nahuatl
language. He spent the 1620s writing his Treatise on the Superstitions and
Heathen Customs that Today Live Among the Indians Native to This New
Spain. He’d originally meant it to be something of a “field guide to the
heathens” to help priests recognize and exterminate indigenous religious
rites and their practitioners. In the process of his documentation, though,
it’s clear from his writings that Father Ruiz de Alarcón grew sympathetic.
He was particularly fascinated with how Nahuatl people celebrated the
sacred in ordinary objects, and encouraged living and spirit realities to
meet up in the here and now. He noted that the concept of “death” as an
ending did not exactly exist for them. When Aztec people left their bod-
ies, they were presumed to be on an exciting trip through the ether. It
wasn’t something to cry about, except that the living still wanted to visit
with them. People’s sadness was not for the departed, but for themselves,
and could be addressed through ritual visiting called Xantolo, an ordinary
communion between the dead and the living. Mexican tradition still holds
that Xantolo is always present in certain places and activities, including
wild marigold fields, the cultivation of corn, the preparation of tamales
and pan de muerto. Interestingly, farmers’ markets are said to be loaded
with Xantolo.
I’m drawn to this celebration, I’m sure, because I live in a culture that
allows almost no room for dead people. I celebrated Dia de los Muertos in
the homes of friends from a different background, with their deceased
relatives, for years before I caught on. But I think I understand now.
When I cultivate my garden I’m spending time with my grandfather,
sometimes recalling deeply buried memories of him, decades after his
death. While shaking beans from an envelope I have been overwhelmed
by a vision of my Pappaw’s speckled beans and flat corn seeds in peanut
butter jars in his garage, lined up in rows, curated as carefully as a mu-
seum collection. That’s Xantolo, a memory space opened before my eyes,
which has no name in my language.