Día de los Muertos Celebration
The Center Celebrates a Traditional Latin American Holiday
Nov 06, 2009
By Hannah Gibson, USMEX GSR
View the photo gallery here.
A holiday that often gets lumped in with Halloween in the United States, and around which a unique commercial market has developed, it is, for many, a holiday “distinto a Halloween,” says Luis Anaya, a current Visiting Fellow at the Center. For him, growing up in Mexico D.F., Día de los Muertos helped him understand the death of his grandfather at a young age. He remembers visiting the cemetery with family members and neighbors to decorate the tombs with flowers and other offerings. Bárbara Zepeda, another Visiting Fellow from the Michoacan, a region of southern-central Mexico, remembers the marigolds – a traditional Día de los Muertos symbol - and their strong smell that would permeate her house and the streets of her town around the end of October and beginning of November. This smell, some say, is supposed to attract the souls of the deceased.
One lesser-known Día de los Muertos treat is dulce de calabaza, or homemade pumpkin candy. Yum! Of course, there are many ways to make this unique treat, but here is one easy recipe to try:
- Cut a small pumpkin in half and scoop out the seeds. Set them aside for later.
- Cut the halves into large chunks.
- Fill a pot with 2 cups of water, 1 cup of fresh orange juice, 2 cinnamon sticks, and 2 piloncillo cones. Piloncillo cones are made of pure, unrefined sugar. They taste like brown sugar with a molasses flavor. If you don’t have any Piloncillo, you an substitue 1 cup of dark brown sugar and 1 tablespoon of molasses for each cone.
- Bring to a boil, add pumpkin, and reduce heat to a gentle simmer.- Cook until the pieces of pumpkin are soft and the liquid is very syrupy, usually about 1.5 hours.
- Serve plain, or with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream
Feliz Día de los Muertos!
