By Jesús Aguado
The festival of the Dead has come back with the joy, colors, smells, and flavors associated with the tradition; all of which had been relegated to memories during the Covid lockdown. The long-awaited Catrina parade is back once again in which participants put their best effort to portray the image that is part of the collective imagination. There will also be offerings in the Jardin Principal; and a universal prayer with ancestral rituals, in which both the Episcopal and the Catholic Church meet in one act. Visits to the cemeteries and crypts are back as well as the keeping of minutes of silence. All of these have always been part of the celebration of death that were cut short by the pandemic. The Catrinas parade, for example, is now in its 20th year and is resuming once again in 2021; bringing ever more visiting Catrines.
There is someone with whom we spoke whose creations each year are more and more spectacular. When Daniel Luna is in costume and people ask him questions, he will not talk, he simply gestures. It’s not that he doesn’t want to answer, it’s simply that his philosophy is: “The Catrina must be haughty.” Daniel Luna, is from San Miguel and he began participating in the festival thirteen years ago. His Catrin costume consists of a hat, a stole, a fan, six-inch stilettos, and the jewelry that is emblematic of this particular Mexican celebration.
“When I started to participate, I decided not to be just one more skull among the others. I studied the engravings of Posadas, the mural by Diego Rivera, which is in short, the mocking by the indigenous class of displays of a Frenchified life, or the ostentation of the upper classes, which were, after all, nothing more than a skull,” he said. He indicated that his character is one of the most photographed during the Locos Parade in June, and so he begins to prepare early in the year, searching for ideas. If he sees something that he likes, he buys it, and the creation comes from that. He doesn’t work alone, but in a team, because his costumes are always the work of his brother, César Luna.
He also clarifies that he does not carry sweets in his bag, rather he uses it to charge his cell phone and other things. He also insisted that “we should not mix Halloween with La Catrina. She is a Mexican icon who has nothing to do with witches, superheroes, or the monsters of Anglo-Saxon culture.”
