When this goes up, I’ll be traveling in the wilds of Trumptopia 2.0 in the season of Halloween and Día de Los Muertos. America (Norte-, United States of) is always interesting this time of year. Decorations pop up. Strange entities manifest in yards, storefronts, advertising. Some are from pop cultures, others from various folklores and mythologies. Some for Halloween.
Some for the Días de los Muertos, causing interesting friction.
Cultural appropriation or rasquache? Is a person in full Catrina regalia—hat, candy-skull makeup, hoop skirt, and parasol, improper? Can you dress up like a Hollywood monster for a Mexican-style picnic in the graveyard? What would José Guadalupe Posada think? Could it be the Global Barrio expanding?
I keep seeing the candy-skull as further and further north, even close to the Canadian border. It’s often a big part of the decor of Mexican restaurants, though a few decades ago it would have been considered bad taste.
In Mexico, the skeletons were mostly an urban phenomenon. The Días as we know them today are a 21st century mutation.
Time causes changes as borders break down.
The first Halloween I remember was in the Fifties in East L.A. I wore a Superman costume that my mother made for me. I didn’t find out about the Días until the Seventies.
No wonder I came up with the concept of Dead Daze for my novel Smoking Mirror Blues. It makes the Día de Los Angelitos, Día de Los Muertos, and Halloween into a three-day fiesta. We will probably see it happen someday.
I believe we can keep traditions while embracing new situations.
All we have to do is fight to keep it all from becoming corporate franchises.
Imagine Amazon, Apple, or Disney bargaining for the rights to la Llorona, la Catrina, la Virgen de Guadalupe, or even Coatlique?
What would Tezcalipoca have to say? Is that his laughter I hear?
Ever notice that multinational corporations have trouble with la Cultura? We don’t seem to get this assimilation thing down . . .
I’ve never been much of a Chicano separatist. I was pocho from the day I landed on this planet, in East L.A. I’m an impurist, a proud mongrel.
After all, there ain’t no such thing as puro Mexicano. The modern nation of Mexico is only 202 years old. The only reason the Aztecs/Mexica were defeated was because all the other tribes didn’t like having their temples burned down and paying tribute. Diversity was the way from before Teotihuacán.
We are rasquache.
I’m overusing that word, but I guess I have too.
I’m wondering if I’ll be crossing paths with the National Guard, Border Patrol, or ICE soon. What will I do? How will it go?
We celebrate all these cultures, and the way they mix and match and create new worlds.
Why can’t we all get along? Aren’t we all skeletons under the skin?
Or should I say calaveras?
Or calacas?
Ernest Hogan, Father of Chicano Science Fiction, is amok. Buy Xicanxfuturism: Gritos for Tomorrow / Codex I, too (Codex II will be out in February with his new Paco Cohen, Mariachi of Mars story, “A Wild and Wooly Road Trip on Mars”).
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