For Catalina Stern, who told me the story
For my Cuban mothers always
There is no other Mexican celebration that I like more than the Day of the Dead. The mixture of the sacred and the profane, of celebration and sadness, of mariachi and La Llorona excites me a lot. I am one of those who walks through the offerings for hours, I calmly look at the details, the photos, the miniatures, the confetti, the food. And I feel part of a world in which I was not born, but which for almost fifty years I have been allowed to consider my home. I also make my little altars, of course. Who doesn’t have someone they would like to bring from beyond to talk for even a moment, or simply to hug?
And since the culture of Mexico is so diverse, rich, enveloping and constantly transforming, something new always appears that surprises me.
This year was the story of “El Tiradito”. A friend who works in Arizona shared it, and neither the other chat colleagues nor I knew it. Maybe some of you will be as surprised as we are by the character and that “Shrine of Wishes”, as they call it (Wishing Shrine), which is in front of an old adobe construction, in a neighborhood of Tucson.
One of the best-known versions of the legend tells that, at the end of the 19th century, a young Mexican named Juan Oliveras, a hacienda worker, married the boss’s daughter, and when his wife was already pregnant, he had an affair with his mother-in-law. The father-in-law, upon finding out, killed him. Since he could not bury him in sacred ground because he was a sinner, his lover buried him where he was murdered. Another version says that Oliveras had an affair with his stepmother and that it was his own father who killed him. And there are several more versions; The truth is that this story, a mix of “Romeo and Juliet” and “Oedipus”, has transformed the site where “El Tiradito” was supposedly buried into a sanctuary of popular devotion.
Little by little, people began to bring candles to the murdered young man, and ask for miracles. Although it is not a place recognized by the Catholic Church, there are always images of Jesus and the Virgin of Guadalupe, and little papers rolled up with requests.
At night there is a procession with a candle for each person whose remains were found during the year. All their names are read at the end. When you don’t know someone’s name, the chorus of voices says: “Unknown.”
As told in the documentary made jointly by the UNAM headquarters in Tucson, the University of Arizona, the Human Rights Coalition, the Humane Borders organization and the Mexican Consulate in Tucson, “El Tiradito” is now also a space of activism where the Mexican community, and the Hispanic community in general, denounces abuses of power and fights for their rights, and at the same time finds hope and consolation in that place.
Let me close these lines with another migrant story not very different from those told in Arizona. I witnessed it a few days ago in Havana, when a group of Cuban mothers participated virtually in a press conference with “seeking mothers,” originally from other Latin American countries, who have lost track of their migrant children in Mexico.
The anguish and pain began for them in September 2024, when a “coyote” videotaped 23 migrants who were on their way from Chiapas to Mexico City. In the images there are men, women, girls and boys, who were never heard from again. That video circulated on social networks, and thus mothers from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Venezuela – countries of origin of the group – were able to recognize their sons and daughters.
In this Mexico of ours that we love so much, the Day of the Dead is not only the festive celebration of reunion with those who preceded us along the way, but also a heartbreaking cry of pain from thousands and thousands of families searching for their loved ones. Let’s not forget it, please.