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| Day of the Dead: yesterday and today By Stacy Trevenon--[ stacy@hmbreview.com ] Published/Last Modified on Wednesday, October 31, 2007 4:42 PM PDT "It's a service to humanity, when we preserve the best of the human spirit contained within a culture." Sitting in the tastefully appointed Half Moon Bay home where she rents a room while on her third mission in the United States, Sister Angelina Moctezuma leans forward to emphasize her words. She has taken off her knitted cardigan and draped it over the arm of her couch, and looks regal in her gray skirt and white blouse. Her dark eyes snap with intensity and her soft voice, with its musical Mexican accent, rings with conviction. She is discussing the Day of the Dead, a day for remembering ancestors by tending graves, making "ofrendas." Growing up in Mexico, Sister Angelina learned the traditions of her people, and her mother baked pan de muertos. In a pastoral calling which has taken her across the globe, she has seen old ways linger and cultures mingle. She maintained close bonds with not just the gestures but what they are about. "I think we were very lucky," she said. "We carried on the traditions, but they were carried with meaning." Her perception into how people and culture evolve blends with her keen sense of roots and her faith. "I love my traditions. I understand them," she said. "But I prefer to understand the phenomenon of migration ... If you want to keep a tradition, you're obligated to get to know the roots and understand them." She has done that. Pre-Columbian cultures like the Mayans or Aztecs, she said, believed death was not forever, and venerated their ancestors. When the Spaniards introduced the Catholic Church, Christianity overlaid and blended with indigenous tenets. Consequently, two celebrations evolved, she said: All Saints Day, known by many as All Souls Day, on Nov. 1, is a day to recall the faithful whom the church regards as saints. Day of the Dead, Nov. 2, is a day to pray for souls in purgatory, the stage of purification before attaining heaven. It also is a day to remember "Los Muertos Chiquitos," or children who have died, she noted. The tradition particularly thrived in central Mexico, where residents went to churches to pray for the dead, cleared overgrown brush around graves and repainted tombstones. Families would divide into groups to tend the graves and go to church. "We were like teams," she said. There and also in Guatemala or El Salvador, families would make a procession, accompanied by mariachi musicians, around town so the spirits could say goodbye to familiar places and people. Moctezuma does not agree with those who say Day of the Dead is dwindling in importance. Instead, she says, outside factors and population growth have diluted it. In lieu of gravesite visits or processions, city dwellers set up altars at home, with flowers, food and photos in the "sacred space" on top. Neighbors prayed for each others' relatives, and received gifts of pan de muertas or fruit. As commercialization grew, Moctezuma said, people bought pan de muertas at bakeries. "If you were religious and believed, you would pray for the dead," she said. "But to visit altars, you went to museums." When Mexicans emigrated, traditions converged "as it happens with food," she said. "They bring traditions with their own expressions, but it gets mixed with whatever is going on the that place. "I think that is normal," she continued, "and going on in any place in the world where cultures mix because people mix." Living between worlds is not unfamiliar to Moctezuma, who left home 50 years ago to follow her calling as a "religious sister" doing pastoral work as opposed to living as a cloistered nun. A member of the Passionist Sisters of Mexico in Mexico City, she has served in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Central America. In the United States, she has served in New York/Missouri and Michigan. On the coast for four years, she teaches catechism through Our Lady of the Pillar Church and ministers in schools and the hospital. She leaves in November and goes next to Europe. "Without God's grace it would not be possible to live here," she said, but "to get rooted with love of the people and place and environmental beauty, called to a different place and uprooted again - it's very painful." Not surprisingly, she advocates deep understanding. "If you love your country and its traditions, the first thing you have to do is get acquainted with the roots," she said. "Expressions may change. But what you really have to carry in your heart is the best ways in which you express your traditions and values and beliefs - those for which a culture should be respected and valued." |