selections of Octavio Paz's El laberinto de la soledad"... festivals that our country and church give us aren’t enough."
selections of Octavio Paz's El laberinto de la soledad
"Society (communes with itself / or becomes one with) is
itself in the fiesta. All of its members return to the primitive confusion and
liberty. . . . Social structures break down and new relationships,
unexpected rules, and capricious hierarchies are created. In general disorder everyone forgets himself . . . .
The bounds between audience and actors, between officials [celebrants] and servants, are erased.
Everybody takes part in the fiesta, everybody is caught up in its whirlwind.
All are part of the fiesta, all dissolve in confusion. Whatever your type, your character, your significance, the fiesta is participation. This characteristic distinguishes it from other phenomena and ceremonies: faithless or religious, the fiesta is a social act based on the active participation of those attending."
"the fiesta is a social act based on the full participation of all its celebrants."
Paz, p. 52. Note that alternative translations are shown in Italics.
Octavio Paz, The Day of the Dead, pp, 47-64.
Fiestas | Ancient indigenous traditions persist | ancient concept | interpreting his commentary
Paz's Commentary:
The prevailing dialectic is reintroduced
"The present in which past and future are reconciled."
(48)
The mask and hidden qualities versus revelation and opening to communion,
A) Aztec cosmology versus modern worldviews
B) nature worship versus freedom and individuality
C) the cycle of renewal versus the arrow of inevitable progress
D) that laughs at death versus that which denies death
For the Indigenous people:
"life and death are the the two sides of a single reality. They are references to the invisible realities."
pp. 56-57.
Interpretation of Paz's commentary:
We as humans are myth makers, story tellers, carriers of the spirits who haunt us
with unspeakably ancient traditions, neither authentic or Spanish – neither
white nor black – neither male nor female – neither right handed or left handed –
but ambidextrous and hermaphroditic, that is to say: all people are ambiguously human.
"Our calendar is full of fiestas. Certain days (this is true even in small, more remote towns, as well as in the large cities) the whole country prays, yells, eats, gets drunk, and kills in honor of the Virgin of Guadalupe1 or of General Zaragoza.2 Each year, the 15th of September, at 11 at night, in all of the plazas of Mexico, we celebrate the Fiesta of the Grito;3 and an enthusiastic crowd actually yells for one hour. During the days that precede and follow the 12 of December, the season gives us a perfect today: dancing, partying, communion, and eating a lot."
In short, every one of us‚ ‘atheists, Catholics, or (merely indifferent) fence-sitters‚’ have our own saint, which we honor each year. The festivals we celebrate are numberless; as are the resources and the time we spend on them.
Paz, p. 48.
1 The patron saint of Mexico.
2 Mexican general who defeated the French at the Battle of Puebla, May 5, 1862.
3 Short for Grito de Dolores, "Cry of Dolores." A commemoration of Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla's call for rebellion against the Spanish in a church in the town of Dolores.dolores, as in the sorrow, sorrowful,
"In every human there is the possibility of her and his being -- or, to be more exact, of them becoming once again -- another person."
Paz, p. 28
Mexico's ancestry is manifest in the Day of the Dead and it reflects the ancient heritage of Aztec -- Mixtec -- Toltec -- Olmec -- Mayan -- Yaqui -- peoples.
That is to say the Dia de los Muertos festival is derived from the indigenous diversity that now can celebrate life and death as a continuous infusion
"Our indigenous ancestors did not believe that their deaths belonged to them, just as they never thought their lives were really theirs in the Christian sense."
"Since their lives did not belong to them, their deaths lacked any personal meaning. The dead – including warriors killed in battle and women women dying in childbirth, companions of Huitzilopochtli the sun god – disappeared at the end of a certain period, to return to the undifferentiated (amorphous) country of the shadows, to be melted into the air. the earth, the fire, the animating substance of the universe."
"Man fed the insatiable hunger for life with death."
"Space and time where bound together and formed an inseparable whole.... And this complex of space-time possessed its own virtues and powers, which profoundly influenced and determined human life."
Paz, p. 55.
"life, collective or individual, looks forward to a death that in its way is a new life."
"life only justifies and transcends itself when it is realized in death."
"The Mexican, in contrast (to western nationalities), is familiar with death, jokes about it,caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it; it is one of his most favorite toys and her most steadfast love."
pp. 56-57.
Fiestas | Ancient indigenous traditions persist | ancient concept | interpreting his commentary
Festivals
BBC world News on Day of the Dead in Southern Mexico
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