Pedir Calaverita Is Not Trick-or-Treating: A Cultural & Historical Perspective on Dia de los Muertos and Halloween in Mexico
By David R. Valdez Patiño for Mighty Kind
“Trick or treat!” you shout in the US.
“¡Queremos calaverita!” (“We want some sugar skulls!”), they shout in Mexico City.
And in some other places in Mexico, they shout a few other short sentences. But in my hometown, kids sing four verses:
El muerto pide camote
Si no se le cae el bigote.
La viuda quiere una ayuda
Para su pobre criatura.
(The dead man asks for some camote*
Or his mustache will drop down
The widow wants a little help
For her poor little baby.)
People from elsewhere in the country find the song long, creepy, and weird. But I like it better. Not only because it is the way of my city, Zacatecas, or because those words are the ones that got me some candy as a kid, but because they tell some little history about “trick-or-treating” in Mexico.
You see, most people both in the US and Mexico, think that dressing up in costumes to go ask for candy at houses, (trick-or-treating in English, or “Pedir el muerto” or “Pedir calaverita” in Spanish) as part of Halloween and Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico is one hundred percent an influence of the US and Halloween. But that is not entirely true.
Kids in Mexico indeed used to ask for some sweet treats around November 1 each year, way before Halloween arrived in Mexico. They just didn’t dress up in costumes for it. And the reason why they did that can be traced back as far as colonial times when Mexico didn’t exist as such, and the land was under Spaniard rule and was called “New Spain.”
AS GRANDMA ONCE TOLD ME
I first came to know about this origin, naturally, through small anecdotes shared with me by my elders. One day, a few days before Día de Muertos, when I was around 8 or so years old, I was sitting at my maternal grandma’s kitchen, and my uncle, a Catholic priest, was in town for a visit. As usual, I was distracted in my own mind, thinking all over the place about stuff when I realized, out loud, “What a weird thing, the song to ask for candy⋯We ask for sweet potatoes when all we want are some treats.”
“What’s weird is that they don’t actually give you a sweet potato, as in the old days,” my grandma replied.
I laughed and said, “Wait, they actually gave that before?”
“Of course. That’s what your mom and siblings got. Camote, oranges, tangerines, fruits of the seasons. Only wealthy families could afford to give away actual sweets and candies, and they were traditional ones— cocadas, dulces de leche, and such, the ones that my father’s factory used to make, not those new ones that produce cavities.
Then my uncle intervened, and he told the story about when a Cuban colleague of his was staying at the local chapter of the order for a few months. When Day of the Dead arrived, kids came by the convent’s door singing a song in which they demanded some sweet potato in the name of a dead man. The Cuban colleague went straight to the kitchen, grabbed some camote pieces, went to the doorway, and handed them to the kids, leaving them absolutely confused and demanding, not in song form, for some actual sweets and candies.
The Brethren had to explain the tradition to the Cuban convent mate, who handed some candy to the now happy, yet still perplexed, children.
This was a cute little story to which my grandma added that things keep changing. My sisters and I got candy, my mom and her siblings got fruit, but my grandma didn’t get to go around asking for treats when she was a girl. She came from a well-positioned family, and they were not poor, thanks to her father’s sweets factory. That tradition was reserved for the children of the poorer families. I don’t recall asking why that was the case. But the doubt certainly remained with me, so a few years later, with normalized and quick access to the internet, I finally did some research to solve that question.
WHAT I FOUND OUT LATER
As I said, the tradition of pedir el muerto can be traced back to colonial times. During those years, most of the traditions that we nowadays associate with Day of the Dead already existed in some way or another. The precolonial indigenous traditions and beliefs to honor dead loved ones had already been mixed with the Catholic traditions of All Souls’ Day in some way. Most “purely Spanish” families limited themselves to attending church and praying for the souls of past generations. Others used to set altars or offerings (ofrendas**) in their homes for their ancestors filled with portraits of them, their favorite foods, candles, flowers, and their belongings. This was not to worship them, but either in the hopes of honoring them in a joyful way or under the belief that on this date, their souls would be allowed to come back from The Beyond to visit and spend the day with the present generations.
In other parts of the New Spanish society, people would go to cemeteries to clean up the graves of their ancestors, light candles, and leave flowers and dishes. They would spend the night and day there mourning, sharing stories and anecdotes, and having a meal.
These last two traditions, as you might have noticed, required a lot of effort to adorn the sets. People needed to buy flowers, extra food, tablecloths, candles, and so on, but few could afford them. The ones who could were wealthy Spanish hacienda*** owners, who preferred the more purely Catholic traditions. So people went to the main house of the haciendas and asked their bosses for supplies to decorate their altars and the graves of their ancestors. For the hacendados,*** this was far from an annoyance. Year by year, they expected their subordinates to ask for the supplies, so they made extra bread, “alfeñiques,” or “calaveras de dulce,”**** provided dishes, and bought extra flowers and candles to give away.
With time and with a good part of the population escaping from extreme poverty after the Mexican Revolution in the early twentieth century, the tradition of asking for these elements for graves and altars evolved to children (still without costumes) going around the town, asking for treats at neighbors’ doors, regardless of the level of wealth of the families involved.
As the century advanced, and because of the influence of Halloween in the US, due to the closeness of the date, Halloween elements were introduced. Fruits and traditional sweets were exchanged for mass-produced candy, and people took in the fun part of dressing up as spooky (or fun) creatures and characters. The fun part is that we not only dress up as foreign characters and beings, but we have also managed to come up with dressing up as Mexican characters and creatures, such as La Llorona, the traditional Catholic character of The Devil, alebrijes, nahuales, skeleton versions of Mexican celebrities, characters, and more.
So now, every time someone tells me “Asking for candy on the Day of the Dead is not a Mexican thing! It’s all gringo-Halloween influenced!” I think three things before telling them the real origin of the tradition:
First, I think, “You’re wrong. Our history and tradition is deeper and stronger than what you think.”
Second, I think about how meaningful it is that kids still sing in Zacatecas, and I remember the anecdote of my uncle at the convent.
Third and more importantly, I think of my grandma, her wisdom, and her kindness. She was one of the most important people in my life, ever. She’s long gone, yet her knowledge is still alive with me. She unknowingly linked herself to Day of the Dead, long before passing away, by sharing what she knew.
And I smile. Because this is what Day of the Dead is about. It’s about thinking of our loved ones and what they taught us about this most beautiful tradition and about life. About her.
* Camote is a local species of sweet potato that is traditionally cooked in the autumn season with milk, sugar, and cinnamon, so it’s heavily linked to Day of the Day.
** Ofrendas, in some places of Mexico or altares in others. They can be translated into English as offerings or altars.
*** Haciendas were the big pieces of land concessioned by the Spanish Crown to Spanish-origin families for agricultural and livestock production. Indigenous Mexicans were forcibly employed there in semi-slavery conditions.
**** Calaveras and alfeñiques are sugar sweets in the shape of skulls or even skeletons, traditional of the holiday.
