Independence Day is today and was celebrated yesterday night, it is truth Mexican party.Here a little stop motion that I took with my iPod , from the neighbors fireworks.
Independence Day is today and was celebrated yesterday night, it is truth Mexican party.Here a little stop motion that I took with my iPod , from the neighbors fireworks.
The next twits made me post these:
Haiti is the poorest country in the Occidental Hemisphere and it is in an Emergency State. Why? Because they suffered a devastating earthquake of 7 degrees in the Richter scale.
As a result chaos habits in Port Au Prince these days. Thousands of deads and hurt people lay together in between the rests and streets of the capital city.Since it is an undeveloped country ,it is not a surprise the lack of logistic for the rescue and rehabilitation of the country (even developed countries in a situation like these don’t seem to be very organized)
Mexico city in 1985 lived a 8 degrees earthquake. The population knows what is to loose your loved ones ,probably all your belonging and to be injured too.The civil society went out and helped each other with supplies and trying to find persons in the remains of the counstructions.We also received international help.
Today the embassy of Haiti in Mexico urged people to stop sending help ( medicines, food, water etc…) directly to their headquarters , because their capacity of storage was already exceeded.They asked people to send things directly to the Mexican Red Cross.
As you know Mexico is a country in development. People that don’t have money to donate or to buy things that will be donated are giving their time for packaging and doing human chains to get things inside the collection centers.
With these i am asking you to find the way to help. You can do it. Just get online and search for your local Red Cross or U.N. information of how you can HELP. And yes post online to create awareness.After all, companies and organizations expends millions of dollars to get their word out.
The USA on October 31st celebrates Halloween. Mexican middle ,high classes and urban society does too. Kids go out to the roads in costumes screaming while ringing to door bells instead of the traditional trick or treat: “queremos Halloween” - “we want Halloween”. And there is no penalty involved in case the person doesn’t give them candy. Some people will arrange spooky decorations in their houses and will invite Halloweeners to observe them.
I remember while being a kid there was the typical lady that would give candy to kids under the condition that the kidz would have to listen a little explanation about the Day Of The Death and watch an altar offered to the ones who already have passed away. Most of the times these ladies would give some unwrapped traditional Mexican candy which later would make all the candy sticky inside of the plastic pumpkin.
As a grown up i am starting to understand those educational ladies. They didn’t want to loose our traditions which most of them are a syncretism of the prehispanic ,colonial and, post-independence and post-revolution cultures.
The Day of the Death is officially celebrated on November the 2nd , it is a national holiday , no one goes to work nor to school. It is the day that is used to remember the ones that already passed away but at the same time is a celebration of Life.Is a duality and a contradiction if you don’t quite understand it.I think lots of cultures have a fiesta like these too but it is celebrated in different ways.
In the night of November the 1st people will gather in cemeteries around the tomb of a friend’s, family member or a loved one ; and make a guard in it for the entire night. The tomb will be previously decorated with xenpazuchitl flowers , food ,corn representing the coming back to earth,bevrage and all the terrenal pleasures that person had in life, even music is played live that night.Cause it is believed that in the night the deaths will descend and join the living ones. People don’t literally believe that but is a way to remember a person that you loved in life and a way to remember that we all are gonna die one day, Lady Death is coming for all of us and we are gonna join them. It is a way of understanding the cycle of life.
There is also the tradition of placing altars in your own home with the pictures and same terrestrial pleasures over it :food,cigarettes, alcohol etc… that the death one had. Flowers and a road of petals to call him or her with the aroma ,oil (of god ,these is where the Catholicism elements mix) to help them make the transition between living and death world into the correct place and not into hell and salt to make them remember that they are death and not alive so they can’t taste it.
In Michoacan the tradition is more alive cause it was originated over by the purepechas or also called mixtecos. People around the globe come to Patzcuaro to celebrate that day and take pictures and videos about it. So come to Mexico and join the intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity that the Day of the Day fiesta represents for the world according to the UNESCO. A holiday that is still celebrated only because of the oral tradition of generations.
Note: Photos above taken by me .
