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The Festival of the Dead is a colourful celebration: offerings, wakes, dancing, meals and music to celebrate the dead.
From late October to early November, in regions of pre-Hispanic cultural heritage (almost all, except perhaps the northern fringe of the country), all families and individuals celebrate and unite with their departed loved ones. Nothing to do with All Saints' Day. Here, the Festival of the Dead is a colorful celebration, heir to the spiritual and mystical syncretism of pre-Hispanic and Catholic traditions. Markets all over the country fill up with papier-mâché skeletons, cempasuchil flowers, sweets and copal. Having set up an altar in their homes and placed offerings on the graves of their dead, the tradition in some regions is for the living to keep vigil in the cemeteries, eating, drinking, laughing and weeping in memory of those who have gone.
This is particularly the case in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán. In Pátzcuaro, the Fiesta of the Dead is the occasion for all kinds of cultural and tourist activities: handicrafts in the Plaza Vasco de Quiroga, lectures and a concert on the theme of death at the Basilica de Nuestra Señora de la Salud. In the lakeside area (mainly in Tzintzuntzán and on the island of Janitzio), the famous celebration of the dead takes place with offerings and vigils on the tombs on October 31 and during the night of November1 and 2. The rites may have been better preserved here than elsewhere, thanks to the collaboration of Pátzcuaro's Tarascan elites with the Spanish invaders, and especially the presence of Vasco de Quiroga.
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