Mexico's Day of the Dead on UNESCO's Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage

Background

UNESCO lists the element under the title "Indigenous festivity dedicated to the dead", submitted by Mexico, on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. As practised by the indigenous communities of Mexico, el Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) commemorates the transitory return to Earth of deceased relatives and loved ones. The festivities take place each year at the end of October to the beginning of November. This period also marks the completion of the annual cycle of cultivation of maize, the country's predominant food crop. Families facilitate the return of the souls to Earth by laying flower petals, candles and offerings along the path leading from the cemetery to their homes, and the deceased's favourite dishes are prepared and placed around the home shrine and the tomb alongside flowers and typical handicrafts, such as paper cut-outs. UNESCO describes the celebration as a fusion of pre-Hispanic religious rites and Catholic feasts that brings together two universes. The listing is not a World Heritage inscription. UNESCO's own explanation is that cultural heritage does not end at monuments and collections of objects: it also includes traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts. So a World Heritage inscription protects a place, while the Representative List recognises a living practice carried by a community.