The Labyrinth of Solitude

From BillionQuotes

Day of the Dead

Mexicans love parties and public gatherings. Everything is an occasion to get together. Any pretext is OK to interrupt the flow of time and celebrate men and events with festivals and ceremonies. We are a ritual people. The art of the fiesta, degraded almost everywhere, is conserved among us. In few places of the world can one live a spectacle similar to the grand religious festivals in Mexico, with their colors--violent, harsh, and pure--their dances, ceremonies, fireworks, unique costumes, and the unending cascade of surprises in sweet fruits and objects that are sold on those days in plazas and markets.

Our calendar is full of fiestas. Certain days (this is true even in small, more remote towns, as well as in the large cities) the whole country prays, yells, eats, gets drunk, and kills in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe¹ or of General Zaragoza.² Each year, the 15th of September, at 11 at night, in all of the plazas of Mexico, we celebrate the Fiesta of the Grito;³ and an enthusiastic crowd actually yells for one hour. During the days that precede and follow the 12 of December, the season gives us a perfect today: dancing, partying, communion, and eating a lot.

However, the festivals that our country and church give us aren’t enough. The life of each city and of each town is ruled by a saint, which they celebrate with devotion and regularity. The neighborhoods and trades also have their own annual festivals, ceremonies, and fairs. In short, every one of us—atheists, Catholics, or fence-sitters—have our own saint, which we honor each year. The festivals we celebrate are numberless; as are the resources and the time we spend on them.

Our poverty can be moderated through the number and luxury of popular festivals. Rich countries have little: there’s no time, and no temperament. And they’re not necessary; the people have other things to do. When they do have fun, they do it in small groups. But, a poor Mexican—How can he live without their two or three annual festivals that compensate him for his poverty and his misery? Fiestas are our only luxury. They substitute, perhaps better, the vacations, theater, the weekend, and cocktail party of the Anglo-Saxons; receptions for the bourgeois; and the café for the Mediterraneans.

In these ceremonies—national, local, union, or family—the Mexican opens up to the outside world. All of them give an opportunity to reveal himself and to talk to God, the nation, friends, and family. In these days, the Mexican yells, sings, and throws firecrackers. He unloads his soul. The night is filled with songs and shouts. Lovers awake their sweethearts with orchestras. There are conversations and jokes from balcony to balcony. No one talks in a low voice. They throw their sombreros up in the air. Guitars are brought out. At times, to be sure, the cheer ends badly: there are quarrels, insults, gunshots, and stabbings. This also forms part of the fiesta. Souls burst out like the colors, voices, and feelings. The important thing is to go out, make one’s way, get drunk of noise and color. Mexico is having a fiesta.

In some festivals, the concept of order disappears. Chaos returns and licentiousness reins. Everything is permitted: the customary hierarchies disappear, as do social distinctions, the sexes, classes, and trades. Men dress as women; gentlemen, as slaves; poor people, as rich ones. The army, the clergy, and the judiciary are ridiculed. Children and crazy people govern. Love becomes promiscuity. Laws and customs are violated.

So, the fiesta isn’t only an excess, a ritual waste of money arduously accumulated throughout the year; it’s also a revolt. Through the fiesta, society is liberated from norms that have been imposed. It ridicules its Gods as well as their principles and their laws: it denies itself.

Society becomes one with itself in the fiesta. All of its members return to the primitive confusion and liberty. The social structure is broken apart and new forms of relationships, unexpected rules, and fickle hierarchies. The boundaries between spectators and actors, between celebrants and servants, are blurred. All are part of the fiesta, all dissolve in confusion. Whatever your type, your character, your significance, the fiesta is participation. This characteristic distinguishes it from other phenomena and ceremonies: faithless or religious, the fiesta is a social fact based on the active participation of those attending.

Reference

This is a translation of the first 1/3 of Chapter 3 ("Día de los muertos") of the Spanish version of Octavio Paz's El laberinto de la soledad (Labyrinth of Solitude). It was translated by Primetime.

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   ¹The patron saint of Mexico.
   ²Mexican general who defeated the French at the Battle of Puebla, May 5, 1862.
   ³Short for Grito de Dolores, "Cry of Dolores." A commemoration of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla's call for rebellion against the Spanish in a church in the town of Dolores.