I’ve had a love affair with Mexico and its culture for most of my life. During my travels around the world, I’ve also noticed something curious about how Mexico presents itself—and how the rest of the world recognizes it.
Walk into a Mexican restaurant almost anywhere in the world and chances are you’ll encounter a familiar face. Sometimes it’s La Calavera Catrina—the elegantly dressed female skeleton better known simply as La Catrina. Sometimes it’s a brightly decorated calavera, or sugar skull. I’ve encountered variations of them thousands of miles from Mexico—on restaurant walls, menus, signs, T-shirts, mezcal bottles and murals.
They’ve become part of the international iconography of Mexico.
The release of Pixar’s Coco in 2017 only increased the international recognition of Día de Muertos and its colorful imagery.
I wanted to know how that happened. How did a grinning skull—and particularly an elegantly dressed skeleton—become such a powerful symbol of a country and its culture?
Like many people, I thought I knew the basic story. Mexico’s Indigenous peoples had ancient traditions honoring their ancestors and the dead. After the Spanish conquest, those traditions became intertwined with the Catholic observances of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. Over the centuries, the two blended into the uniquely Mexican celebration we know today.
It’s a tidy explanation. The reality is considerably more complicated.
In 2019, I experienced Día de Muertos—or Día de los Muertos—firsthand with visits to Tlaquepaque and Tequila, both designated Pueblos Mágicos (Magical Towns) in the state of Jalisco.
In the center of Tequila, I watched toddlers perform dressed as little Catrinas while carrying cardboard coffins. The sight was humorous, slightly macabre and wonderfully Mexican.
In many ways, that scene reflected something I would encounter again and again in my travels: death occupies an unusually familiar place in Mexican culture. It is mourned, certainly, but it is also talked about, joked about, depicted in art and acknowledged as an inevitable part of life. Just as important is the enduring connection between the living and those who have died.
Día de Muertos celebrates that connection.
As my travels continued, I discovered a celebration shaped by many influences—Indigenous beliefs, Spanish Catholicism, regional customs, art, politics, tourism and popular culture. Some elements reach far into the past. Others are surprisingly new.
Some are being created during our own lifetimes.
So how did this extraordinary tradition—and its unmistakable imagery—come to define Mexico in the eyes of so much of the world?
That question sent me down the rabbit hole called Día de Muertos.
When James Bond Created a Tradition
I traveled to Mexico City in 2021 to explore Día de Muertos on a much grander scale.
It’s difficult not to be swept up by the spectacle—Catrinas, calaveras, music, costumes and enormous crowds filling the streets. At the center of it all is the Día de Muertos parade, with spectators packed along the route and a massive celebration in the sprawling Zócalo, the historic heart of Mexico City.
Watching it, you’d be forgiven for assuming that generations of Mexicans had filled the capital’s streets for this annual tradition.
They haven’t.
The 2015 James Bond film Spectre opens with Daniel Craig moving through a spectacular Día de Muertos parade in Mexico City’s historic center.
Mexico City tourism officials were understandably delighted with the international exposure. There was just one problem:
The parade didn’t exist.
The filmmakers had invented it.
In 2016, Mexico City turned Hollywood fiction into reality, staging a Día de Muertos parade inspired in part by what moviegoers had seen on screen. It quickly grew into one of the world’s most recognizable Día de Muertos events and a major tourist attraction.
In 2021, I found myself perched atop a six-foot-high replica of a sugar skull, one of dozens lining the roughly two-mile route along Paseo de la Reforma. From my unusual vantage point, I looked down on crowds packed ten-deep along the avenue, craning their necks to catch glimpses of the colorful procession.
From up there, you’d never guess that what was unfolding below me was a tradition barely five years old.
Something didn’t have to be centuries old to become real.
Then I went to Puebla.
Behind the Front Door
In Huaquechula, Puebla, Día de Muertos wasn’t something I watched from behind a parade barricade.
I walked through people’s front doors.
The community is famous for its ofrendas monumentales, towering altars constructed inside family homes to honor loved ones who have recently died. Unlike the smaller ofrendas I’d seen in plazas, restaurants and public buildings, these could rise nearly to the ceiling, structures of white fabric and multiple levels filled with flowers, candles, photographs, food and objects associated with the person being remembered.
During Día de Muertos, families open their homes and strangers are welcomed inside.
That took some getting used to.
I wasn’t walking through a museum exhibit or looking at a reconstruction of an old custom. I was entering someone’s home at a profoundly personal moment. The face in the photograph wasn’t an anonymous representation of “the dead.” It was someone’s husband, mother, son, grandmother or friend.
Each ofrenda told a story.
There might be a favorite food, a particular drink or objects that revealed something about the person’s life. One impressive altar had been created for a local baker. His family had surrounded his photograph with reminders of the work that had apparently been such an important part of his life.
But another home has stayed with me even more.
An elderly woman holding a candle sat quietly beside an ofrenda created for a man who had recently died. Visitors moved through the room around her, but she remained near the altar.
I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t know her relationship to the man being remembered, and I didn’t ask. I certainly can’t tell you what she was thinking.
I just remember watching her.
After the enormous public celebration I’d witnessed in Mexico City, the simplicity of that scene was striking. There were no giant puppets or ornate costumes. No television cameras or crowds ten-deep along Paseo de la Reforma.
Someone had died. His family had created a place to remember him. And an elderly woman sat beside it holding a candle.
For all the photographs I’d taken and everything I’d read about Día de Muertos, I think that was the moment when I began to understand what lies beneath the pageantry.
The celebration is ultimately about memory.
Later, at the cemetery in Huaquechula, that understanding became even more tangible. I watched people tending family graves, cleaning and decorating them and preparing them for Día de Muertos. Flowers brought color to the cemetery as families cared for the places where their relatives were buried.
Whatever complicated history had produced these customs, this wasn’t something dreamed up for a movie or designed by a tourism office. Visitors like me might have come to see it, and tourism certainly played a role in bringing us there, but the families would have remembered their dead whether we were watching or not.
It was a lived family tradition.
On that same journey, I traveled to nearby Atlixco, where Día de Muertos took on another character. There were Catrinas, public celebrations and plenty of the colorful imagery that has made the holiday internationally famous.
But what I remember most is the countryside.
Fields of brilliant orange cempasúchil, the marigold so closely associated with Día de Muertos, stretched toward the horizon. Beyond them rose the unmistakable profile of Popocatépetl—Popo, as Mexicans affectionately call the great volcano.
Orange flowers for the dead beneath an ancient volcano.
It was almost impossibly Mexican.
I took plenty of photographs in Puebla that year: the fields, the Catrinas, the altars, the cemetery.
But the photograph I continue to return to is much quieter.
An elderly woman, a candle in her hand, sitting beside the dead.
How a Skeleton Became Mexico
My curiosity about the imagery of Día de Muertos eventually led me to José Guadalupe Posada, the Mexican illustrator and printmaker whose grinning skeletons have become so familiar that it’s easy to imagine they’ve always been part of the celebration.
Working during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Posada used inexpensive prints to chronicle—and ridicule—the world around him. His skeletons danced, drank, rode bicycles, attended parties and appeared in scenes recognizable to ordinary Mexicans. Politicians, fashionable society and the pretensions of the wealthy were all fair game.
In Posada’s world, death was the great equalizer. Strip away the clothing, money and social position and, underneath, everyone looked remarkably similar.
Among his skeletal figures was La Calavera Garbancera, created around the time of the Mexican Revolution. She appeared as little more than a skull wearing an enormous, fashionable European-style hat.
But there was a joke behind the hat.
The image mocked Mexicans who affected European fashions and attitudes while denying or looking down upon their Indigenous heritage. Posada’s message was essentially that expensive clothing and social pretensions meant little in the end. Beneath the fancy hat, we are all skeletons.
The figure we now associate so closely with Día de Muertos began not as an ancient representation of death, but as social satire.
What fascinated me was how completely that satirical figure had become intertwined with Día de Muertos.
The transformation continued decades after Posada’s death.
In 1947, the great Mexican muralist Diego Rivera included Posada’s skeletal woman in his monumental Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central. Rivera’s mural presents a surreal procession through centuries of Mexican history, bringing together conquistadors, presidents, revolutionaries, street vendors and other figures from the country’s past.
Near the center stands the skeleton.
Rivera gave her a full body and dressed her extravagantly, complete with a feathered serpent boa that evokes Mexico’s Indigenous past. He placed Posada beside her and portrayed himself as a child holding her hand, with Frida Kahlo standing just behind them.
Here was Posada’s satirical skull transformed into La Catrina, an elegant skeletal woman occupying center stage in the story of Mexico.
I’ve stood before Rivera’s mural in Mexico City, just steps from Alameda Central, the very park depicted in the painting. During Día de Muertos, I’ve walked through that same area surrounded by people dressed as Catrinas—painted faces, elaborate hats, long gowns and skeletal smiles.
Standing there, I could almost watch the image travel through time.
Posada put the skull on paper. Rivera gave her a body and placed her within the sweep of Mexican history. Later generations took her out of the mural and into the streets.
And they kept reinventing her.
Following Posada Home
In 2023, my curiosity took me to Aguascalientes, where Posada was born in 1852.
There I visited the Museo José Guadalupe Posada, housed beside the historic Encino church. Seeing so much of Posada’s work together gave me a broader appreciation of the artist. La Catrina may have become his most famous legacy, but Posada’s world was populated by an entire society of skeletons.
I also visited Aguascalientes’ National Museum of Death, where Mexico’s relationship with death unfolds through art and imagery from different periods of its history. What had seemed like one simple Día de Muertos symbol was becoming part of a much larger story about how Mexicans have represented death.
Then I stepped outside the museums and watched that story continue evolving.
Aguascalientes celebrates Día de Muertos with its Festival Cultural de Calaveras, a major annual event that embraces Posada and his imagery as part of the city’s identity. Catrinas and calaveras are everywhere. Art, costumes, performances and public celebrations transform the imagery Posada once printed for ordinary readers into a cultural and tourism attraction.
There’s an interesting circle to all of this.
Posada used skeletons to make fun of society. Rivera took one of those skeletons and helped turn her into a national cultural figure. Aguascalientes embraced Posada and his calaveras as part of its identity. Día de Muertos embraced La Catrina. Tourism carried her image still farther.
And today I can walk into a Mexican restaurant thousands of miles from Aguascalientes and find her staring back at me from the wall.
The skeletal woman who began this story had traveled farther than I ever imagined.
La Catrina hadn’t simply become part of Día de Muertos. She had become one of the faces Mexico shows the world.
The Indigenous Story
My travels in Michoacán raised a different question.
I had initially gone there because I was drawn to the history of the Purépecha, whose civilization is too often overshadowed internationally by the Aztecs and Maya.
The Purépecha built one of the great civilizations of pre-Hispanic Mexico. They successfully resisted Aztec expansion and developed their own political system, language, religious traditions and remarkable craftsmanship. Traveling through Pátzcuaro and the surrounding communities, I became interested not only in their history but in how much of their cultural identity remains visible today.
That eventually brought me back to Día de Muertos.
The Lake Pátzcuaro region—and particularly the island of Janitzio—has become one of the defining images of the holiday. Candlelit cemeteries, flower-covered graves, families keeping vigil through the night and boats crossing the dark lake have been photographed and reproduced around the world.
It’s tempting to view those images as an untouched window into pre-Hispanic Mexico. But the traditions themselves and the story of how they came to represent Mexico are two different things.
Michoacán was the political home ground of Lázaro Cárdenas, who served as governor of the state before becoming president of Mexico in 1934. In the decades following the Mexican Revolution, the country was actively redefining what it meant to be Mexican. Indigenous culture, which had so often been marginalized, became increasingly important to the national identity promoted by artists, intellectuals and government officials.
The Purépecha became part of that story.
During the Cárdenas era, Michoacán was also being promoted to visitors, and the Noche de Muertos traditions around Lake Pátzcuaro—particularly on Janitzio—increasingly attracted outsiders and became powerful representations of Indigenous Mexico.
Nobody needed to invent Purépecha traditions surrounding the dead. They were already there. But which traditions a country chooses to celebrate, photograph, promote and present to outsiders can profoundly affect how the rest of us understand that country’s history.
A regional tradition can become a national symbol.
Today Pátzcuaro and Janitzio are among Mexico’s most famous Día de Muertos destinations. They’re so popular that accommodations can disappear months ahead and the crowds can become overwhelming. Ironically, that’s why I’ve never visited Pátzcuaro during Día de Muertos itself.
My visits there were instead about understanding the Purépecha—their history, communities and craftsmanship. Only later did I realize I was also looking at another piece of the Día de Muertos puzzle: not simply how traditions evolve, but how certain traditions come to represent an entire nation.
Nearby in Capula, I encountered La Catrina again, this time in the hands of artisans producing intricate ceramic versions of the skeletal woman Posada had put on paper generations earlier. The town’s famous ceramic Catrina tradition is itself relatively recent; Michoacán tourism authorities credit artist Juan Torres with introducing the form to Capula, inspired by Posada and Rivera.
Then, in February 2023, just three days before I was scheduled to fly to Oaxaca, something unexpected happened.
I was at my brother Pat’s house when something caught my eye.
Peeking out from the back of a set of curtained shelves was an alebrije.
I pulled it out and discovered that it had belonged to our late brother, Rich.
Three days later I would be in Oaxaca, where I planned to visit San Martín Tilcajete, a Zapotec community famous for its fantastical wooden alebrijes. And here, unexpectedly, was one that had belonged to my brother.
Three days later, I was in San Martín Tilcajete watching artisans carve fantastical creatures from copal wood and cover them with intricate painted designs.
Their story traces back to 20th-century Mexico City artist Pedro Linares, who said that while seriously ill he dreamed of a strange forest populated by fantastical hybrid creatures repeatedly shouting a word he had never heard before:
Alebrijes.
After recovering, Linares began recreating the creatures from papier-mâché.
Oaxacan artisans later took the idea in another direction. Drawing upon their own woodcarving traditions, they created brightly painted creatures carved from copal wood. Oaxaca’s tourism authorities date the development of San Martín Tilcajete’s distinctive alebrije tradition to the second half of the 20th century. The community has since become internationally famous for them.
Then popular culture added another transformation.
Pixar’s Coco introduced millions of people around the world to alebrijes as colorful spirit guides in the Land of the Dead. Coco didn’t invent alebrijes, but it gave them a new role and carried that association around the world.
For me, however, the alebrije was no longer simply another example of how traditions evolve.
After finding Rich’s alebrije three days before leaving for Oaxaca, it would forever carry another association: my brother.
The deeper I traveled into Día de Muertos, the less the story seemed to be about death itself.
It was becoming a story about how we keep the dead with us.
Across the Pacific
Then, in October 2025, I went to Manila.
I hadn’t traveled there looking for Día de Muertos. I was following an entirely different fascination: the Manila Galleons.
For roughly 250 years, Spanish galleons crossed the Pacific between Manila and Acapulco. We usually hear about the cargo—the silver moving west and the silks, porcelain and spices moving east.
But the ships also carried people.
And people carry ideas.
I’d become particularly interested in evidence that Filipino migrants brought distillation technology to western Mexico during the colonial period, contributing to the complicated development of agave spirits.
Here was something quintessentially Mexican—mezcal—with part of its story possibly reaching thousands of miles across the Pacific.
It made me wonder:
What else crossed that ocean?
During my research surrounding that first Manila visit, I came across a Filipino tradition I’d known little about: Undas, the observance surrounding All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day on November 1 and 2.
I haven’t experienced Undas in a Filipino cemetery myself. But what I read sounded remarkably familiar. Families visit cemeteries, clean and decorate graves, bring flowers and food, light candles and gather to remember their dead.
Immediately, I thought about Huaquechula.
I thought about the cemetery, the ofrendas and the elderly woman I’d photographed sitting beside one of them, candle in her hand.
Undas isn’t Día de Muertos with a Filipino name. Each developed within its own culture and history. But the similarities made me look again at something so obvious I’d almost overlooked.
The dates.
November 1 and 2.
All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.
And Mexico and the Philippines shared something else.
Spain.
An Older and Bigger Story
Mexico had rich traditions surrounding ancestors and the dead long before the Spanish arrived.
But honoring ancestors isn’t uniquely Mexican. Societies around the world have made offerings, visited burial places and maintained connections with those who came before them.
Europeans did too.
The Spanish brought centuries-old traditions surrounding death and remembrance, along with something particularly important: All Saints’ Day on November 1 and All Souls’ Day on November 2.
Spain didn’t create Día de Muertos. Indigenous societies already had complex beliefs and rituals surrounding ancestors, spirits and the dead. But neither did the modern celebration simply survive unchanged from the pre-Hispanic past.
Instead, the Catholic observances provided a framework around which different traditions could gather. Indigenous beliefs mixed with European practices, regional customs and generations of family traditions.
There’s a word for that process: syncretism.
And the mixing never stopped.
The James Bond parade, La Catrina and Coco‘s spirit guides are reminders that traditions continue to absorb new influences even after we begin calling them traditions.
That’s what Manila ultimately changed for me. It didn’t provide an answer to the origins of Día de Muertos. It made the familiar explanation—an ancient Indigenous celebration with Catholicism layered over it—seem inadequate.
Not because the Indigenous connection is wrong, but because it’s incomplete.
Indigenous traditions, Catholic practices, European customs, regional identities, art, politics, tourism and popular culture have all helped shape what Día de Muertos has become.
After five centuries, trying to determine whether every candle, flower, plate of food or cemetery vigil is “Indigenous” or “Spanish” may be asking the wrong question.
Día de Muertos isn’t the survival of a single ancient tradition. It’s the product of centuries of people continuing to shape it.
