Mayan traditions honor the skeleton, considering the underworld simply another place to live

I left behind my familiar end-of-October Halloween heritage and then All Saints Day to seek some truths others hold dear those same dates each year: Day of the Dead.

Determined I was to bypass the resort culture The Riviera Maya offers in abundance on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Love those fine hotels with palapas and hammocks by the sparkling Caribbean Sea, but the celebrations I sought needed to include the dearly departed.

Cemeteries specifically to discover how families gather to celebrate Dia de los Muertos, real cemeteries in the city and in the jungle.  

Festivals too at Xcaret to determine if deep, ancient cultural habits can be recreated, preserved and honored in tourist settings.  Of that I left home skeptical.  

Turns out tequila’s evident either way of visiting: resort reveling or tradition seeking.  Welcoming spirits for a day or two — Day of the Dead is a well-defined tradition of only a few days — includes bottled spirits too if the departed had a fondness for drink in life.

Altars abound with favorite substances of those who died: foods and flowers mostly, often a photograph or small drawing.  In a little community, neighbors may share an altar. In city cemeteries, each grave becomes an elaborate tribute to welcome the departed.

These are happy altars, extending a joyous welcome.   “We help the spirits find us,” teaches Alberto Cencaamal, my Mayan guide in Muyil, an archeological site receiving a UNESCO grant to develop a botanical garden with the biodiversity of the Sian Ka’an region.

Alberto has lived his whole life in Muyil, population 78. Farming, not school, filled his childhood. Brilliant well-spoken fellow, seemed to me, first experiencing English in 1999 when the discovery of artifacts turned his neighborhood into a World Heritage site.

Great language skills this man has; I understood every word he spoke and knew with him I was standing in a world different from my own.

“I knew a great shaman who could become an eagle,” he said as a matter of fact, not a boast. “Wise men can become shape shifters.”

He’s helping shape a cooperative of Mayan women and men to sell marmalade made from dragon fruit, baskets from local grasses, textiles woven in communities.

“Our goal is to show different age people they can still practice all ancient things,” Alberto said.

If this tiny corner of bustling Riviera Maya was all about ancient people embracing traditions of their ancestors, I decided my search for the authentic was really happening.

You can find the Muyil community and Alberto or his neighbors on Highway 307, just south of the more famous (for now) Tulum.

The southernmost of my discoveries south of Cancun, Muyil is the northern tip of the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve. UNESCO says this is one of the greatest biodiversities in the world.

I thought Alberto was the greatest of teachers and then I met Augustin Villalba, a ceramics teacher in the jungle villages of Coba, and Casimiro, the Mayan man who opened my eyes in the Ek-Balam archeological site.

Everything means something, and more in The Riviera Maya. Black jaguar is Mayan for Ek-Balam.

“Much is going on in the underworld and our myths tell us those stories,” Casimiro told me. “That helps us welcome our spirit visits, and understand the Day of the Dead.”

My goal precisely.  

Ek-Balam began changing from the place Casimiro says he played as a little boy to an archeological site in 1984 when a farmer planting corn found two sculptures.

“We immediately started a ceremony that lasted 15 days Casimiro said.”  Because I still thought in my Western ways, I figured that meant they were happy about the discovery.

Not so.  “We feared we had disturbed the gods and the ceremony was to apologize,” he said.  “We are Catholic, and we honor and trust our Mayan gods.”

National Geographic researchers arrived, finding hieroglyphics visitors can see today, and excavation began in earnest in 1994.  More than 7,000 pieces have been found, Casimiro says, now with happy confidence.

“Seven years ago I took a class about these hieroglyphics and now I share my experiences as a Maya man who also has time with archeologists.”

Suited me exceptionally well as a visitor: solid research with local folks telling their tales.

In Coba, a little to the west but a do-able drive from whatever resort, hotel or bungalow on the beach you choose from the gazillion Riviera Maya choices, plan to buy pottery. Schoolchildren and their families are designing and producing wonderful plates, bowls and sculpture with ceramics teacher Augustin Villalba.

He’s passionate about appreciating and preserving ancient culture.  “We must give people a chance to stay in their villages. Otherwise they must move to cities and work in construction.”

Bringing the roots of Mayan culture to the surface to share with others: that’s what Villalba says the pottery project is doing. And he believes the people have wisdom to share.

“They work until they’re 90 and live until age 105. We must respect what they know.”

Villalba is living in Tres Reyes community and shares ancient Mayan pottery techniques with the 25 villages of Coba where he says no one has electricity and there are no jobs.

The ruins are spectacular, the tours led by smart local Mayan people and the history abundant. Coba was a ceremonial center, larger than Tulum and Chichen-Itza.

This discovery of pottery-making villagers in the Yucatan jungle, and the plate I now serve sandwiches on with the design of a shaman praying strikes me as spectacular too.

Villalba is also connected to the Mayan ball game discussed in all the archeological sites.  The ancient game is played again as theater, instead of just imagined with a tour guide.  This stage is underground.

Descend long wooden stairs with handrails, deep in a cenote, walls of limestone, stars overhead for a story of two brothers waking the gods while practicing the ball game.

The tale becomes one of the brothers versus the underworld with a goal of freeing villagers. Music, lights, costume, narration in a remarkable location. Underground? Underworld? I was starting to grasp the crossover so clear and acceptable to these people.

Coba Sunset Show is the title, rather lame I thought for something so significant. Expect excellence with this theater experience.

 Expect more insight into Day of the Dead because the performance reaffirms the Mayan belief that death is a part of life, that going through the underworld is simply a journey.  Maybe I too could welcome the annual spirit visits.

Eventually I began to see skeletons in a new light.  Satirical and political art, for instance, painted by Jose Guadalupe Posada a century ago and revered and re-created today. Honored skeletons, not scary or silly as in my Halloween tradition.

Death is just another place to go, I heard repeatedly.  Started seeming logical for the dearly departed to visit as November arrives.  

If my search for local people in their communities isn’t your idea of a holiday, feel fine about heading to Xcaret for the four-day Traditions of Life and Death Festival.

Plenty of quality even though this is a big motorcoach tourist place. It’s 35 miles south of the Cancun airport, 200 acres calling itself an eco-archeological park.

I’ll have to go back for the subterranean rivers, jungle walks, sweat lodge and museum quality hacienda because I focused on the special events just for Day of the Dead.

Here they present the Traditions of Life and Death Festival: music, dance, theater, art, handicrafts and cuisine. Forums too but my language skills aren’t what they ought to be.

Day of the Dead altars abound with orange flowers called cempasuchitl and candles, sugar skulls and special foods and drink.

“These items are all guides to help our loved ones return; they serve a specific and joyous purpose,” Iliana Rodriguez taught me.

Skulls made of sugar and others with amaranth and honey, an Aztec cereal for immortality, are everywhere, evidence again of joy and welcome, never intended to be fearful.

Visitor faces become skeleton-like, simple or elaborate, full face or one half.  Face painting booths with mirrors appear throughout Xcaret to help yourself to white paint and fine black pencils to outline the bones.

Muc-Bi-Pollo is cooked and served during the festival. Families and village communities dig pits, fire stones to a high heat and wrap palm or banana leaves around chicken in a cornmeal pastry.

Overnight in the cemetery is the cooking and gathering tradition, now often in community, or the Xcaret festival. I murmured how special to be able to witness this underground cooking outside the archeological site of Coba.

Gentle correction provided by a local person waiting for a blessing by the shaman at the altar filled with flowers, cakes, candles and fruits. “Sacred cooking. Bigger than special.”

Can I return to The Riviera Maya some day for more wisdom of the ages?  Alberto in Muyil assured me “This area is still alive. Come here after midnight and hear the ancient Maya.

“It is not true the ancient ceremonies disappeared.”

July 13 appears to be a big one, lasting day and night involving the sun, sky, moon, jungle, corn and many spirits but seems it’s just for the Mayan people.

Maybe I opened my soul to learn enough at Day of the Dead to receive more.