The bread of the dead

Natural History, Nov, 1998 by Robb Walsh

El Machin Chico and I are sitting at the farmhouse table drinking hot chocolate and eating sweet pan de muerto, the bread of the dead. It is the morning of November 1, the second day of the three-day annual celebration known as El Dia de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead. Today the festival will reach its high point: the spirits of deceased adults will re turn to join the feast.

As we talk, three baby turkeys peck at the bare dirt in the courtyard just beyond the open doorway of the dining room. It is a sunny day, and the temperature is already at least eighty degrees. There is no breeze, so the rustic aromas of wood smoke and manure hang in the warm air. We can hear several radios playing in other parts of the village and some boys yelling down by the river. But the loudest sound by far is the frantic mooing of cattle. "They want to eat, too," chuckles El Machin Chico, nodding in the direction of the din.

I am interested in the role that food plays in the Day of the Dead celebration, and I've been asking a lot of questions. But first, I have to ask El Machin Chico about his unusual nickname. He says his father, Crispin Marquez, was known in the village as a very hard worker. He worked so hard that people called him El Machin (the machine). As soon as his son Francisco was born, people started calling him El Machin Chico (the little machine), and the name stuck.

Several boys appear, and we all walk down to the barns to feed the cattle and turkeys. "We fatten other people's cattle here," Francisco tells me. "And we sell the turkeys." The farm is on the edge of the village of San Lorenzo Cacaotepec, half an hour's drive from the city of Oaxaca in southwestern Mexico. With its rutted roads and open sewers, the village is not much to look at, but the farm and countryside beyond are lush and green. Livestock fed, we return to the house, and Francisco's wife, Margarita, shows me the kitchen shed. It is made of sticks fastened together vertically, so the light on the dirt floor is striped. Mole necro--a thick, deep-black sauce of charred chilies, chocolate, tomatoes, and ground nuts, traditionally made here on the Day of the Dead--is cooking in a cazuela, a clay pot that sits directly in the coals of the wood fire. Two dead chickens, soon to be plucked, lie on the dirt floor. "Chickens to eat with the mole," Margarita explains. In the poorest of houses, the mole negro is eaten from a bowl, like a soup; to have chicken with the mole is a luxury:

In bags throughout the house are many more loaves of pan de muerto. I ask how many loaves of bread the family has. The week before the celebration, I am told, they usually buy a twenty-two-pound sack of flour and take it to the baker, along with five dozen eggs and the other ingredients needed for the sweet bread. Most families here also bring along their own papier-mache decorations, usually ovals with various faces painted on them, which are inserted into each loaf. The baker prepares the family's entire order of pan de muerto. Each loaf represents an individual soul. The twenty-two-pound sack of flour yielded 130 loaves this year, which included tiny loaves for the angelitos, the spirits of children who have died.

"The angelitos are here now," says Francisco as he shows me the family ofrenda which dominates an entire wall of the living room. The ofrenda is the center of the Day of the Dead celebration. It is a pyramidal altar, generally three or four tiers high, covered in cloth. An arch of sugarcane stalks is formed above it, decorated with the yellow marigolds known as zempoalxochitl (literally "twenty flowers" in the Nahuatl language but popularly known as "the flower of the dead"). On the top tier of the ofrenda are often photos of deceased friends and relatives, religious statues, and candles. The rest of the altar is taken up with special foods and beverages, mainly pan de muerto, fruits, and hot chocolate. "The angelitos will leave at noon," Francisco continues, "and then we will put out the food and drinks for the adult spirits." I am not wearing a watch, and neither is Francisco. I look around the house but don't see any clocks. I wonder how he can be so precise about the timing of all this.

It is very warm indoors, so Francisco and I go outside and sit on a porch facing the courtyard. An old woman walks by, carrying a bundle of firewood, which she drops outside the kitchen before she enters. "That is my mother," Francisco says. Her name is Vincenta, she is seventy-six, and she has the classic face of a Zapotec sculpture. Suddenly the church bells begin ringing and fireworks explode all over the village. A parrot in a cage hanging from the eaves above us begins to shriek. I marvel at how perfectly the village is synchronized. There is never any doubt about when it is precisely noon on November 1 in San Lorenzo Cacaotepec. Francisco looks squarely into my eyes. "The angelitos are leaving now," he says, with a quiet smile. Vincenta and Margarita come out of the kitchen carrying a bowl of black mole, a bottle of mescal, glasses, and some pan de muerto, which they take into the living room to place on the ofrenda. Francisco and I go and watch. "My father was born here on this farm eighty-five years ago," says Francisco. "We have no photos of him. But he loved mescal and mole negro, so we always put those things on our ofrenda." El Machin Chico pours El Machin Viejo a hefty shot of mescal and places it on the altar.