Sunday saw Mexico’s return to Day of the Dead mass commemorations, after closures due to COVID-19 interfered with last year’s recognition of the tradition
Mexico returned Sunday to mass commemorations of the Day of the Dead, after traditional visits to graveyards were prohibited last year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Even though cemeteries in Mexico were closed to visitors last year to avoid spreading the virus, so strong is the tradition that his son still slipped into the cemetery in the eastern Mexico City suburb of Valle de Chalco to visit him.“To live is to remember,” he said. “What they most want is a visit from those they were close to in life.”
There was a special altar in downtown Mexico City dedicated to those who died of COVID-19. Relatives were allowed into a fenced-off plaza and offered equipment to print out photos of their loved ones, which they could then pin, along with handwritten, messages on a black wall. For a country where people usually die surrounded by relatives, COVID-19 was particularly cruel, as loved ones were taken off alone in plastic tents, to die alone in isolation.
“These days are not sad here; they are a way to remember our dead with great happiness,” said Otilia Ochoa, a homemaker who came along with dozens of others to take pictures of the flower-decked offerings near the coronavirus memorial. “What is good is to recover this liberty, this contact we had lost” during the pandemic, Ochoa said.
“We are here to celebrate life!” Mexico City Tourism Secretary Paola Felix Diaz said in kicking off the parade.
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