POMUCH, Mexico – Antonio Haas pulls a wooden box from a small cement cubicle, brushes a year of dust from the top and pushes back the lid to reveal a pile of coffee-colored bones and a small skull covered with patches of hair.
It’s what remains of his father who died five years ago, and with the Day of the Dead approaching, it’s time for their annual cleaning.
It may strike outsiders as macabre, but Haas says it’s “the most natural thing in the world.”
“There is nothing to fear from the dead,” he says, tenderly rubbing the skull. “It’s the living we should fear.”
For this 58-year-old farmer and dozens of other descendants of Mayan Indians in this small village on the Yucatan Peninsula, the last days of October are devoted to cleaning the bones: dusting, polishing, scrubbing and rearranging the skeletal remains of family members in time for the Day of the Dead, when Mexicans welcome the souls of the dearly departed back to earth.
The ceremonies are Halloween taken seriously.
Mexicans honor the dead on Nov. 1, when the souls of dead children are believed to arrive, and on Nov. 2, when adults are believed to return.
They celebrate with meals, songs and prayers, both at home and in cemeteries. Tombstones are illuminated by candles, laden with orange marigolds and piled high with the favorite foods of the deceased, including tamales, small skulls made of sugar, and “bread of the dead” – round, sugar-sprinkled loaves topped with strips of crust symbolizing bones and a knob representing the skull.
But Pomuch and a handful of other small Mayan communities dotting the Camino Real Alto region of the peninsula go further.
Without blinking an eyelash, Haas pulls one bone after another out of the box, wiping away black grit with an embroidered handkerchief. The handkerchief has served as a bed for his father’s remains for the past year.
Bone-cleaning is believed to date to pre-Hispanic Mayan cultures, and is carried on today “so that when the souls return they will see they haven’t been forgotten,” says Venancio Tus Chi, 42, a cemetery employee who for 25 pesos ($2) will clean bones for families who don’t have the time.
Modern-day Maya in the Camino Real Alto initially bury their dead in coffins, but after three or four years they exhume them, dry the bones in the sun and scrub them with a soft cloth or small paintbrushes.
The bones are placed in small wooden boxes and laid in cement cubicles, viewable from the outside through wrought-iron doors.
Some chambers are multitiered. The top chamber of the Haas family’s tomb is reserved for the father, the middle one for the mother and the bottom one for a son and grandmother.
Before and after the Day of the Dead celebrations, the boxes are left open to view and decked with flowers and votive candles. Empty eye sockets peer out from skulls perched on piles of carefully arranged bones.
Each year, the newly cleaned bones are placed on or wrapped inside a new handkerchief embroidered with brightly colored flowers, initials or symbols reflecting the departed person’s personality or favorite things. It’s like “changing their clothing so they will rest more peacefully,” explained 24-year-old Valdemar Euan, who cleans his grandmother’s bones.
Associated Press
Maria Euan (left) and her granddaughter Maria clean the bones of their relatives in the cemetery of Pomuch, in the northwestern Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, on Friday. In this small village, the last days of October are devoted to cleaning the bones of family members in time for the Day of the Dead, when Mexicans welcome the souls of the dearly departed back to earth.
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