There’s no other place like Pomuch, Campeche to celebrate the Day of the Dead

The Day of the Dead is near. The Mexican tradition, which Unesco included in its list of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity since November 2003, is celebrated all over the country, with variations; but nobody does it like the town of Pomuch, in Campeche, and we tell you why.

What makes Pomuch so unique on the Day of the Dead?

The fact that relatives dig up their dead to clean up their bones and place them in a new urn, decorated with white, clean embroidered shawls, in a show of homage and love to a family member who is no longer there.

For many it is a macabre spectacle, but for the locals, it is a way of honoring the dead and a tradition of Mayan culture that clings to time.

Pomuch is located 53 kilometers from the capital of Campeche and is a town known for this extraordinary way of celebrating the Day of the Dead.

For its inhabitants this tradition is normal and in no way means profanation, since, under the regime of uses and customs, the law allows the inhabitants to exhume and expose the skeletal remains of their dead three years after their burial.

  Three years after the death, the bodies are exhumed from the vaults and transferred to the wooden or cardboard “boxes”, where the bones of the deceased are placed.

The remains are covered with cloth, not without first embroidering them with the name of the deceased, and decorated with flowers, crosses and other religious decorations.

The tradition of the dead in Pomuch also consists of putting food for the deceased, the altar is set up with the “pibipollo” (typical food of the region), with all kinds of sweets and then a bottle or beer, while the prayers arrive and after the prayer, where the rosary predominates, everything on the table is distributed.

These days in the cemetery of Pomuch you can observe the niches in which the skulls stand out, so they are their letter of presentation and a living form of giving life to death.

TYT Newsroom