Constitution

More than 500 years ago, when the Spanish Conquistadors landed in what is now Mexico, they encountered natives practicing a rite that seemed to mock death.

It was a rite the indigenous spate had been practicing at least 3,000 years. A ritual the Spaniards would try unsuccessfully to eradicate.
A ritual known at present as Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead.
The ritual is celebrated in Mexico and certain parts of the United acress, including the Valley.
Celebrations atomic number 18 held each year in Mesa, Chandler, Guadalupe and at Arizona province University. Although the ritual has since been merged with Catholic theology, it still maintains the basic principles of the Aztec ritual, much(prenominal) as the use of skulls.
Today, battalion don wooden skull masks called calacas and move in honor of their deceased relatives. The wooden skulls are in addition placed on altars that are dedicated to the dead. Sugar skulls, make with the names of the dead person on the forehead, are eaten by a relative or fri dying, according to Mary J. Adrade, who has indite three books on the ritual.
The Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations kept skulls as trophies and displayed them during the ritual. The skulls were use to symbolize death and rebirth.




The skulls were used to honor the dead, whom the Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations believed came sanction to visit during the monthlong ritual.
Unlike the Spaniards, who viewed death as the end of life, the natives viewed it as the continuation of life. Instead of fearing death, they embraced it. To them, life was a inhalation and only in death did they become truly awake.
The pre-Hispanic people honored duality as being dynamic, said Christina Gonzalez, aged(a) lecturer on Hispanic issues at Arizona State University. They didnt separate death from pain, wealth from poverty like they did in Western cultures.
However, the Spaniards considered the ritual to be sacrilegious. They perceived the indigenous people to be barbaric and pagan.
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