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For a while I entertained the hypothesis that little boys got black eye sockets and little girls got red ones, but I found enough exceptions that I decided to call that a “tendency” rather than a “rule.”
There is a large anthropological literature on cultural rules, but little on cultural tendencies. When I was in graduate school, there was a tendency for the rule people to feel superior to the tendency people. As a rule, I tended to avoid such discussions.
The (brilliant) Pixar movie “Coco” has definitely affected the understanding of Día de Muertos, at least in Oaxaca. Fortunately, the film crew spent a lot of time here and based a lot of it on Oaxaca.
People with painted faces are mostly happy to have their pictures taken. Interestingly, many of the adults are not Mexicans, but visiting tourists. Unlike locals, tourists seem to think the point of the thing is to take selfies.
(Tourists get their comeuppance, however, when they try to remove the greasepaint with hotel soap. Or maybe it is the hotel laundry staff that get a comeuppance.)
Unlike cemeteries, where you either sit quietly by the family grave or go outside the walls to eat, shop, or play arcade games, or you just mill around enjoying the press of the crowd, the city streets are for marching around in the daytime and dancing at night. At night the costumes become more bizarre, with lots of devils, so it is easy to end up dancing with a devil. Think about that.
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