COLUMN: What do we learn from a cross-cultural experience?

It’s time to accept that we are hopelessly multicultural. Too many powerful streams are flowing into the American ocean, each one bringing its own flavors into the cosmic mix. In spite of hostility to multiculturalism and the fear that accompanies it, we must be honest and admit that we enjoy drinking heady draughts out of those rivers.

They are surefire cures for the boredom of sameness. A strong drink is coming up: Los Días de los Muertos, The Days of The Dead, November 1-8. This Mexican tradition is now embedded in U.



S. culture. Everywhere we look we see people in skeleton costumes, faces painted in the mask of death.

The scenes are grotesque, and together with Halloween, the celebration reminds us that life is short. Life ends. But death is eternal.

Death never ends. And it’s only a matter of time when you and I and everybody will be dead. That’s good.

We need to be jolted out of the illusion that sense pleasures are perpetual in the human world. This is the value of the humble Mexican custom, the honoring of the dead that has now become a cross-cultural experience for us. A cross-cultural experience means that we travel into another culture.

We don’t need to visit a foreign country. The difference will come to us, here in our own country. The only requirement is that we keep an open mind.

If we can do that we are treated to an often wondrous perspective, an insight into a fascinating different reality, one that puts our home culture in an objective light. Objectivity can happen when something causes us to question our beliefs and ingrained habits. Los Días de los Muertos will do that because those days demonstrate a stark contrast to our ideas of the afterlife.

We don’t deny any accepted truths. Salvation and heaven are still present. But now there is another belief system in our awareness.

Why do we give ourselves permission to do this? Because it’s very important to be able to hold opposing ideas, or better said, old and new ideas, simultaneously in our minds. Doing this has the magical effect of immediately widening our outlook, of exercising our critical faculties, lessening prejudice and eliminating narrow-mindedness. This is absolutely necessary if we want to be well-educated.

The Days of the Dead have their origin in the cosmology of ancient Mexican civilizations. Along with native beliefs there are Spanish Catholic beliefs associated with the celebration. The realities of Purgatory and Hell play a dominant role.

If we commit evil in life we will be punished in Hell. If we repent we still bear the mark of sin, but we are spared hellfire and consigned to Purgatory for a period of purification before we are allowed into Heaven. The idea that souls in Purgatory communicate with the living on earth enters into the Days of the Dead observance.

Similarly, in the Aztec system, the souls of the dead are taken to Mictlan, which is an intermediate stage before they are united with the Sun, the equivalent of Heaven. There is no permanent Hell as in the Catholic belief, but Mictlan is still a frightening place, ruled by fearsome skeletal gods who are both alive and dead, and who have become the inspiration for the dancing skeletons of the famous artist, Jose Guadalupe Posada, whose art adorns every Days of the Dead celebration. Posada’s figures are dead but yet alive, representing the deep-rooted Mexican Indian truth that life and death are just two sides of the same coin.

All souls go to Mictlan, with the exception of warriors who die in battle and mothers who die in childbirth. Their souls are taken to the heavenly realm forthwith. The Days of the Dead are also a time to remember and honor ancestors and departed loved ones.

Elaborate altars have become traditional in many households, with portraits of the dear departed and “ofrendas” or offerings of favorite food and drink to the deceased. The dead are permitted to return to earth during this time, to enjoy earthly pleasures again. They are warmly welcomed, made to feel loved and honored.

This is in contrast to American Halloween where the dead are feared, ghosts accompanied by malignant spirits and witches and goblins. The reassuring “ofrendas” tradition is now widely accepted in the U.S.

, a dramatic sign of our multicultural reality. Joe Barrera, Ph.D.

, is the former director of the Ethnic Studies Program at UCCS. He teaches Mexico/U.S.

Border Studies and U.S. Military History.

He is a combat veteran of the Vietnam War..