Día de Muertos in Oaxaca
Graves & Graveyards
Page Outline
Halloween Night in Xoxocatlan Cemetery
![Tight packed crowds fill the streets heading into the cemetery. photo by DKJ](191118picts/graves/gr01.jpg)
Tight packed crowds fill the streets heading into the cemetery.
![Merchants sell everything. photo by DKJ](191118picts/graves/gr06.jpg)
Merchants sell everything from snacks and toys to clothes and colored rocks.
![Stopping for Street Food photo by DKJ](191118picts/graves/gr02.jpg)
Nobody objects to the living stopping for street food …
![Sitting Around the Family Grave photo by DKJ](191118picts/graves/gr04.jpg)
…but the better sort of person sits around the family grave and turns his thoughts to memories of the departed.
![Candles and Flowers photo by DKJ](191118picts/graves/gr03.jpg)
Candles and flowers and a few food offerings were traditional. Skeleton manikins are apparently a new development
![Candles and Flowers photo by DKJ](191118picts/graves/gr05.jpg)
Since the dead visit their home altars on Día de Muertos, it is a little unclear —apparently to everybody— what they are doing in the cemetery as well.
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All Saints in the Municipal Cemetery
![Graves of the Wealthy photo by DKJ](191118picts/graves/gr07.jpg)
It is easy to be impressed with the wealth displayed in Oaxacan graves. A family grave can hold four or five people, who may be moved to a potter’s field if the grave rent is not paid to the city on time.
![Rare Sand Painting on a Tomb photo by DKJ](191118picts/graves/gr08.jpg)
“Sand paintings” are usually outside the cemetery, where there is more space. Putting one on a tomb is efficient, but rare.
![A Tomb photo by DKJ](191118picts/graves/gr09.jpg)
The little cubes are decorative candles.
![Shooting Gallery photo by DKJ](191118picts/graves/gr11.jpg)
This shooting gallery is among the distractions set up just outside the cemetery. A buck made is, well, a buck.
![“Heart that loves, heart that kills” photo by DKJ](191118picts/graves/gr12.jpg)
The elaborate lettering under this mural inside the cemetery reads: “Heart that loves, heart that kills.” Go figure. (And yes, each figure is sitting on a date glyph from the pre-Columbian 260 day calendrical cycle. Go figure some more.)
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Background Design: Artisanal Paper, Francisco Toledo