Where It's Always Day of the Dead

Last Thursday I went the Ciudadela Handicrafts Market to buy a few gifts to take home to friends and family.  As I have mentioned, the best place to buy Day of the Dead items in season is at the Jamaica Market.  However, the Ciudadela Market is geared toward tourists, and given the tourists' fascination with the Day of the Dead, you can find plenty of skeleton figures and ceramic skulls here any time of the year.

Of course, now there was even more Day of the Dead merchandise.  The market even had its own "ofrenda" set up at one end of the building.

A selection of skeletal figures

The spiffy couple in the center are the classic "catrina" and "catrín", Mexican words perhaps best translated into English as "belle" and "beau", an elegantly dressed couple.  The image of the "catrina" in her big hat and feather boa first appeared in the early 1900s in the satirical drawings of the engraver José Guadalupe Posada.   Posada wrote, "Death is democratic.  In the end, white or brown, rich or poor, everyone ends up as a skull." 

This "catrina's" boa is actually a feathered serpent (the pre-Hispanic god Quetzalcoatl), an element that was added by the painter Diego Rivera in one of his murals.

Here you can even buy nearly life-size figures of a "catrina" or "catrín".  I did not check out the price tag.

 

One of my favorite makers of ceramics is the Mexico City based company Servín.  I was surprised to see in the market a "catrina" and skulls made by Servín.

I like the figure in the corner of the "catrina" in her kitchen.  Also, something I had not seen before are the skulls covered with butterflies.  Butterflies have come to be associated with the Dead of the Dead, because monarch butterflies arrive in Mexico in early November.  Some indigenous peoples believe that butterflies are the souls of the dead.

Well, I found the items that I wanted to buy as gifts.  No, they were not skeletons or skulls.  I bought some small Nativity scenes as Christmas presents.  That is something else the Ciudadela Market has in stock any time of the year.