Portal de Cartagena
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This Wednesday, November 6, starting at 6:00 p.m. at the Los Mateos Social Center, Cartagena Piensa proposes in the Santa Lucía neighborhood to know how the Day of the Dead is understood from the Christian tradition through other cultures.
For this, María del Carmen Solano-Báez, PhD in Society, Development and Labor Relations from the University of Murcia, will carry out the workshop `Remembering our dead with other perspectives'.
Around the elaboration of an altar of the dead, a fundamental part of the Mexican traditions of the Day of the Dead (All Saints Day), we will introduce ourselves in the ways of remembering the dead of other cultures.
It will be an opportunity to understand the different visions, of different generations and different cultures that live in the neighborhoods.
Simultaneously there will be related activities for children in charge of the Association Raise Awareness.
About The altars of the dead
According to tradition, the soul of people who have died returns to visit their family on Day of the Dead.
Therefore, Mexicans await your visit with everything the deceased liked.
They build an altar full of flowers and they leave cigarettes, chocolate, candy, tamales, broths and tequila.
At the end of this day, these foods have no taste because the soul of the dead has come and has taken its essence.
Children and adults make beautiful altars.
The place where the altar is placed has to be swept with aromatic herbs a day before and family members wait awake all night long to the spirit of their dead, who will come down to enjoy their
offering.
One of the most interesting things about this celebration is the union of the Catholic religion and pre-Hispanic cultures.
3,000 years ago, long before the arrival of the Spaniards, some indigenous ethnic groups celebrated rituals in honor of the life of their ancestors on All Souls Day.
In the sixteenth century, the two celebrations joined and began to celebrate the Day of the Dead.
In 2003, UNESCO said that the Day of the Dead was “one of the oldest and strongest cultural expressions among the country's indigenous groupsâ€, and that is why it declared the celebration as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
About the rapporteur
María del Carmen Solano-Báez is originally from Puebla, Mexico.
Doctor in Society, Development and Labor Relations from the University of Murcia and Researcher at the Center for Rural Development Studies in Zautla, Puebla, Mexico.
Source: Ayuntamiento de Cartagena
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