Under the Same Stars: Messaging the Great Beyond
Monadnock Ledger Transcript  Nov 5, 2019 page 9

Messaging the Great Beyond

Here’s what I learned traveling in Guatemala while our son and daughter-in-law lived and worked there: Central Americans prize nothing higher than their tight-knit families, rich history, colorful cultures and beautiful natural settings. It would take extraordinary pressure to choose an arduous, uncertain migration and leave all that behind. This story takes us closer to that truth.

On November 1, Dia de los Muertos (AKA Day of the Dead, Dia de Todos los Santos or All Saints Day, you can choose), Guatemalans of Mayan descent fly vibrant paper kites to honor and communicate with their dead. 

Over the five years our “kids” lived in Antigua our (husband and friends) visits twice coincided with the colorful “barilletas gigantes” festivals in nearby Sacatepéquez villages of Santiago and Sumpango. These celebrations have been around for 3,000 years and are recognized by various religious sects.  The giant kites are a blend of art, tradition and color, sending messages of unity, love, respect and faith to dead ancestors and to Mother Earth. 

 

Our son drove us to Santiago where we parked for a small fee in someone's yard, a little like we used to for Big Ten football games in Iowa City. Later we paid to use the family's toilet, a simple no-flush cement throne in an out-building near our car.  

                   
                                        

First we wound through streets crowded with local families, 

past fair vendors offering street food,

 

roasted pork right off the hog on a spit,

exotic (to us, anyway) flowers and souvenirs. 

Think county fair with princess pageants and kite competitions,

 

combined with Memorial-Day-times-ten; 

families in their Sunday best picnicking,

 flying and displaying kites some 40 to more than 70 feet across as they maintain family tombs 

and decorate the cleaned graves of loved ones with flowers.

Traditionally it takes 40 days to build the kites, the first day marked by the village's unmarried men heading out to the coast at 4:00 am to laboriously collect bamboo for the frames.                                      

Community and family groups work for weeks cutting and pasting. The glue is a mixture of yucca flower, lemon peel, and water, ropes are made of the maguey plant (the plant that also brings us tequila), and the tails are made from woven cloth.

The kites have portraits of deceased loved ones and messages ("there is no other love on earth as great as that of a mother"), 



religious or folklore themes, tributes to the environment and occasional political messages eschewing government corruption. 



                    
My favorite symbol is the dazzling quetzal,

 Guatemala’s stunning national bird. The Quetzal’s iridescent green tail feathers were esteemed as symbols of spring plant growth by ancient Aztecs and Maya and as a symbol of goodness, light and liberty: the quetzal is said to die of sadness if it is caged.

Families and children run between graves with smaller kites all day. 




Bigger kites fly in the late afternoon, but the largest kites assembled in the morning are propped and strung on poles, too heavy to fly at all.

We watched one crash down on the builders. Luckily no one was badly injured. 








Locals compete to see who has the most beautiful kite and which flies the longest, but at the end of the day there is a feeling of peace and unity as the fabled “wind against the paper takes away bad spirits to restore harmony and calm.” Far from a sad remembrance, Dia de los Muers is a joyful connection with those who have gone before. 

Julie Zimmer, a retired educator and journalist, is grandma to two dual U.S./Guatemalan citizens also living in Peterborough.