Changing configurations of day of the dead / día de muertos during the Covid-19 pandemic in Mexico and beyond

Lavery, Jane and Finnegan, Nuala (2022) Changing configurations of day of the dead / día de muertos during the Covid-19 pandemic in Mexico and beyond , Palgrave Macmillan

Record type: Book

Abstract

In his illuminating study, The Work of the Dead (2016), Thomas Laqueur reminds us that the dead come in and out of cultural focus. The period of time since Covid-19 erupted into the lives of millions across the globe from early 2020 onwards has seen a painful energizing of the cultural focus of which Laqueur writes. This book explores the ways in which death in Mexico —probably most associated with the visual tour-de-force that is the Día de Muertos or Day of the Dead festival—has been reconfigured and reimagined since Covid both within Mexico and for some Mexican migrant communities beyond its boundaries. It traces these transformations as they have occurred in Mexico and takes two diasporic communities in the UK and Ireland as case studies through which to study the changing configurations of the festival and its commemoration of the dead during the pandemic time-frame of 2020-2022. It also assesses the shifting contours of the feminist response in Mexico to the Día de Muertos and charts the literary and performative ways in which this feminist protest has been channelled since the outbreak. The project reflects on the intersections of death and the pandemic with traditional Día de Muertos commemorative practices through analysis of both creative and commercial practices as well as community responses in (trans)national and diasporic contexts.
This book is being written over the course of 2020-22 during the Covid-19 pandemic and as we move hesitantly into a tentative post-pandemic age. In Mexico City, the 2020 street events and parade were replaced by virtual events which played specific homage to all those who had passed due to Covid-19. The pandemic generated commercial opportunities for small businesses whereby traditional Día de Muertos products were adapted in innovative ways, and creative practitioners and activists responded to the health crisis deploying imaginative modes of artistic, literary and performative expression. The wider community has similarly revealed both resilience and creativity as demonstrated in the way they have adapted to new ways of celebrating Día de Muertos via literary expression and conferred in particular by digital technologies. Though ‘normal’ Día de Muertos global practices have been affected by the pandemic, so too does it become apparent that as a practice it is in a process of constant transformation to meet people’s needs in ever-shifting circumstances (Lavery 2021). The book charts the ways in which that transformation has occurred, and certain questions guide our examination of the topic. These include wider considerations of how the pandemic has shaped ideas about death and dying differently. It explores how commemorative and mourning practices have changed and evaluates the impact of the pandemic on the way stories are told about the dead. In addition, it asks how the pandemic has cast a light and shaped conversations on global issues such as mental health, exhaustion, and gender violence and seeks to understand how these have been captured differently in Día de Muertos rituals in Mexico and beyond through its transnational case studies in the UK and Ireland. Given that in 2020, the Día de Muertos became a particularly poignant festival considering the global death tolls due to Covid, the book reflects on these diasporic communities’ lived experiences of the pandemic and evaluates how their approaches to Día de Muertos changed from the onset of the pandemic. Notions of belonging, distance and home are all radically questioned by the pandemic’s halt to mobility and disruption of everyday life — we ask how in these radically changed circumstances do diasporic Mexican communities re-imagine these relationships, and connect to loved ones in Mexico. Finally, the book will evaluate data emerging from author-led workshops and multimedia exhibitions, as well as Día de Muertos events that seek to engage with local Mexican and non-Mexican audiences in both Ireland and England. Held in 2021-2022, the participants engage with the rich compendium of Día de Muertos symbolic and narrative systems in order to discuss how the pandemic has framed ideas of loss more widely. In this way, we can see how the Día de Muertos commemorative practices can be expanded to other societal groups and communities to take on new meanings within a dramatically altered and at times apocalyptic environment.

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