All Saints Day and Day
of the Dead
A curious mixture of indigenous and catholic beliefs, Day of
the Dead is celebrated in Bolivia
on November 2nd, following All Saints Day on the 1st. Less
morbid than it sounds, Day of the Dead is a day to remember those people who
have died and celebrate their lives.
On the 2nd, Bolivians converge upon the countries
cemeteries to set up a kind of feast for their loved one, setting a small table
with a tablecloth- white for a child, dark or coloured for an adult. They bake fascinating
bread creations known as tanatawawas in the image of the person they are remembering
and place them on the table along with traditional items such as coca leaves as
well as the favourite dish of the deceased.
Many in Bolivia
believe that death is not separated from life, and the traditional belief is
that on Dia de los Muertos the dead return to Earth for the day to renew their
presence in the living world and to share the day and feast with their
families. This coincides with Bolivian Spring, when the rains start to fall and
everything turns green.
In traditional Andean beliefs, where mother earth or Pachamama is revered as sacred, an important
concept is reciprocity. They believe that by feeding the dead with the Dia de
los Muertos feast, they will be rewarded when the dead then intervene to ensure
that pacahmama delivers the rains needed for harvest.
To come from a world where, for the most part, death is a
taboo subject rarely discussed let alone celebrated as a part of life, there is
something powerful about a culture who devote this weekend of celebrations to
the people they love and remember.
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