A beautiful tradition and swarms of praiseworthy insects (Morelia and Ocampo, Mexico)

A little over three weeks ago, I was walking with Adriana along the streets of Morelia, the capital of Michoacan and Adriana's home city, crying my little heart out. "It's so beautiful!" I kept saying. Adriana, who has a heart of stone and, I suspect, faulty tear ducts, rolled her eyes at me, as she does every time I cry at a movie or song or, in this case, the Day of the Dead altars that lined the stone pedestrian avenue and filled the yard of a nearby junior high school. She does not understand what it is to have feelings. But it was so beautiful! The altars were being set up during our walk the night before Halloween, and they would stay until at least November 2, the Day of the Dead.

Each one is made in honor of a person who has died, whose picture sits on a table at the center of the altar, and whose achievements, personality and tastes are reflected in the altar's elements. An altar in honor of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, for example, featured a life-sized figure sitting at a desk, pen in hand. There is also an offering of food -- in the cases of people who are being remembered by their families, this consists of all of the favorite foods of the deceased: tamales, corundas, chocolate, pan de muertos, and, often, tequila, among other tasty edibles and relaxing drinkables. Behind the food, and all around the altar, hang flowers and colorful sheets of tissue paper that have been stenciled and cut with death motifs, and there is usually a clay skull, skeleton, or Catrina (elegant and gaunt female death figure) on display. The floors of the altars are the most impressive part. They are made of corn, seeds, colored sawdust, orange and purple flower petals, sand, salt, and other grainy things that can be turned into elaborate designs. I noticed that many of the altars showed salt footsteps leading to a grave, and Adriana explained that this was so that the dead could find their way back to wherever they had come from after visiting the world of the living. See?! So much love and caring. Doesn't it make you want to cry, too?

I cried again on November 2, when Sergio, Adriana's father, took me to the main city cemetery. No place for a claustrophobe. It was packed with people bringing bouquets to graves, or decorating tombstones with marigolds, or setting up crowns of plastic blossoms, or simply sitting together holding hands. My eyes had trouble focusing on any one thing -- there was so much color, so much activity. Just outside of the cemetery was an enormous food market, equally overwhelming and bustling, and as soon as we went out to buy coconut water, I felt silly for crying. This was a celebration! A day of remembrance, not a day of grief. Of course, the dead are missed, but, more than anything, their lives are celebrated.

I wish that Americans did this! It seems to me that most Americans are terrified of death. We do everything in our power to avoid it, to postpone it, to distance ourselves from it -- we even put old people in nursing homes so that other people can deal with their medical problems. We should be learning from our grandparents, who have decades' worth of stories to tell and wisdom to impart, but instead we discount them because they are no longer young and immortal. The Day of the Dead brings the idea of death into every mind in Mexico, at least for a few days, and does so with colorful tissue paper and comical skeletons and fond memories. It embraces death instead of denying it -- surely this is a healthier approach to the inevitable? (It is also so beautiful!)

A few days after we returned to Ocampo from Morelia, I came back home from my daily English classes with Karina and Marcelo, and Adriana, who had been fiddling with the water tank on the roof, said, "Irene, have you seen the butterflies?" I said, "NO!!" We expertly climbed our rickety ladder, La Roña, and stood on the roof looking up with our mouths hanging open. There were butterflies everywhere! They were flapping their little wings in the wind, blowing thither and yon, but all going in the same general direction -- as they had been doing since late August, when they started their journey in Canada and the northern United States. These insects had flown 4500 kilometers! And here they were, arriving to their winter resting place. I kept thinking, "Welcome, little buddy! Hello there! Welcome! Oh hi hi hi!" Very exciting.

I went up to El Rosario, the biggest butterfly sanctuary, on November 7, expecting to see little. It was a cold and cloudy day, and after my guide, Rosalio, led me up the mountain to the four trees where the butterflies were clustered, I thought, "But this is not little!" They weren't flying around, as they do when the sun is shining, but the brownish-orange masses of insect wings bending the branches with their weight were impressive. (I keep thinking how different a phenomenon this would be if it weren't butterflies that migrated and hibernated in the forest but rather, e.g., cockroaches. Surely they would have been exterminated by now, no? Monarchs are lucky that we think they're so goshdarn pretty and delicate.) Rosalio told me a few stories about the butterflies -- the most interesting one was that they were drawn to gold and other metals in the mountain, which, he said, had been detected by satellite but never found on the ground. I had heard before the link between the butterflies' orange wings and the color of gold, but never in the context of science. (And I must confess that I'm highly skeptical, although: who am I, short-term visitor with little knowledge of biology and history, to doubt the word of a man who has lived here all of his life? Everything is a form of understanding, after all. We just explain things the best way we can.)

Yesterday I went up to the same sanctuary with Alma, a friend who stayed with us this weekend while her husband was away on business, and oof! wowee! oh man! it was spectacular! I can't do the experience justice in writing -- nor in talking, nor in pictures and videos -- but I'll try. It was a warm, sunny day, and, as soon as we arrived to the entrance of the sanctuary (two hours after leaving the house -- the transportation gods were not pleased with us), we knew that we were in luck. There were butterflies fluttering about over the fields and in the parking lot outside the hut where we had lunch, and, a few minutes into our walk up the mountain with our guide, Maria, we passed a big, wing-flapping group of them drinking from a puddle of water. A bit higher up, we stopped and gaped in awe -- there were streams of butterflies coming at us from all directions. They glided down the wooded slope, and flew around our heads to impress us with their gentle flapping sounds ("Bravo!" I thought, "What a powerful wingbeat!").

It got better. A few minutes later, we looked up and, holy shamoley! there was a whole river of butterflies in the treeless part of the canopy that mirrored the path. So many butterflies! You cannot imagine. It was like a two-level highway, with ugly, loud, clumsy humans on the ground and delicate, silent, unassuming monarchs passing above. We reached a field, where they were flying around like snowflakes, and finally made it to the trees where they had chosen to cluster. There were now more than four trees almost entirely covered with butterflies, and, all around the trees, thousands of them were swarming. Again, if they had been cockroaches, I would probably have feared for my life or, at least, my hygiene. (Why do cockroaches have such a terrible reputation? And I consider myself open-minded when it comes to insects!) They were monarchs, though, and Alma and I both sat on the ground and smiled like little kiddies. Even though our fellow visitors were shamelessly ignoring the sign that said, "Silence, please!", we could hear the flapping of wings like rustling leaves.

How amazing that the people living near these forests have seen this year after year for generations! And the people in Ocampo and Angangueo have watched the butterflies drifting in the sky every November, nearing the end of their long journey. Interestingly, though, very few people from Ocampo have ever gone up to the sanctuaries, and the children in Adriana's classes don't know the first thing about the monarch's life cycle. The monarch butterflies are Michoacan's claim to fame -- every tourist brochure features at least one photograph of a butterfly resting on a leaf -- and the people living closest to the action don't feel a strong connection to it (except for the tourist dollars it brings in). This is partly due to the lifestyle and resources of most of the residents -- Adriana tells me that the farthest away from Ocampo most of her students have been is Zitacuaro, which takes about half an hour to reach and is a relatively small city -- but also has to do with education. The goverment could decide to get people pumped up about the monarch butterfly, to teach them about its history and why it is important to protect it, from an early age, so that the sanctuary guest lists featured visitors from nearby as well as people from Canada and Germany. The butterfly reserves are currently a rich person attraction, even though the entrance fee is minimal; I wish that they were an everyone attraction.

The last thing I promised to write about was the celebration on November 20, when, in 1910, Francisco I. Madero declared that he intended to take the presidency, which had been held by the dictator Porfirio Diaz for decades. The start of the Mexican Revolution! This is, I was told, the most important political holiday in Mexico, and Ocampo partied appropriately hardy. Alma and I watched the two-hour long parade, in which red-, green-, and white-clad schoolchildren of all ages danced (the very youngest just wiggled with spirit), made impressive human pyramids, performed acrobatic tricks, and chanted, "¡Viva Mexico! ¡Viva Madero!". After the parade there was a Mexican dance competition in the main (and only) square, and at night there was a dance at the worst locale in town, which has a dirt floor and only half a roof. It was splendid. We stayed until the wee hours, and I felt bold enough towards the end to dance to every song with either Freddy, Ricardo, Jacob or Cesar, patient young men endowed with remarkable hopping abilities. Duranguense -- my new favorite kind of dance -- is not much more complicated than bouncing from one leg to the other with bent knees, either alone, in a loose embrace with a partner, or plastered onto a partner like another article of clothing. It's ideal for cold climes (aerobics + body heat), and also highly entertaining when the whole crowd is doing it: it looks like a sea of bobbing heads. Last night Adriana and I spontaneously decided to attend another dance, in our very own neighborhood of La Junta, and we danced with Eduardo, Fierros and Freddy.

I am so fond of all of these people! I am so fortunate to have met them! I often wonder what my life would be like right now if I had decided not to live with Adriana, or if the good-hearted people who showed me around during my first few weeks hadn't introduced me to their friends. All of my present happiness is due to the kindness and generosity of strangers -- strangers who are now friends. Gush gush gush.

As I've been writing, the clouds have been doing all sorts of wacky things. Right now they look like seaweed, or hair in water. In another part of the sky they look like cotton balls that have been pulled apart. And Nina the Lopsided Kitten just jumped through the window and rubbed up against my legs. It's a glorious day! I'm going to get dressed and venture forth into it aiiiiiiiie!