Los Dias de Los Muertos:  Los Angelitos, Los Muertos, Los Santos.  The days of the dead run from the switching of the day from October 31—Halloween—to November 1 – All Saints Day through Midnight November 2.

Don’t fear dying, fear not having lived. ~anon 

Today, Nov.1, is All Saints, known in Mexico as La Dia de los Angelitos, the angels. It is the day to honor the dead children.  The dead come home to be feasted by their families, graves are cleaned, painted and dressed with marigolds, and the lives of those before us are remembered.

It is far from a mournful tradition.  Families picnic in the grave yards to be near those they love.  Skulls and skeletons are not gruesome objects of fear but reverent icons to remind us that this is just one world and another awaits.

The path back to the living world must not be made slippery by tears. ~anon

Originally the festival was Aztec in origin, took a month and was held in August.  That month and the celebrations were in honor of Mictecacihuatl – she who died at birth, the Lady of the Dead.  When the Spaniards came, the Catholic Church moved the celebrations to All Saints Day under their “if you can’t squash it, subvert it policy.”  They sanitized out the goddess and put in all their saints. 

Guess what, she’s back.  In the great Mexican tradition of the Cult of the Virgin Mary and the technique of subversion learned so well there is a new Lady of Death.  La Santisima Muerte: the Most Holy Lady of Death, incarnation of the Virgin Mary and heir to the throne of Mictecacihuatl. The worship of her has spread across the urban areas of Mexico and into the US to be assimilated by other Latin American communities as well.  She is considered the patron folk-saint of drug dealers, prostitutes and cops.

And she, La Huesuda (the Lady of Bones), and Los Dias De Los Muertos figure prominently in my recent release Personal Demons. 

Here’s an excerpt from Personal Demons:

Without much warning, Chase came face-to-face with the scene. Rodrigo, Chase recognized his mug from the pictures, lay on his stomach, head turned to the side, and one arm flopped across his back. The other flung out to the side and rested across the ring of marigold blossoms that circled his body. Flies crawled across glassy eyes, and crosses in white and red painted Renaldo’s face and down his arms. Each line ended in a dot, an arrow or a fork.

Well-rehearsed, the LAPD team of specialists did their dance around the body. At the periphery, a coroner’s crew waited with their bright blue body bag to take custody of the corpse.

A woman, her hair pulled tight back and wearing a better suit than her male counterparts, caught sight of them. In fact, she and Chase were the only two wearing actual suits, everyone else barely qualified as business casual. She said something to a trio of techs before picking her way toward Chase and Enrique. After introducing herself as Detective Wyatt, exchanging the brief necessities of rank and protocol, she filled them in. “We figure he was shot first over there,” Wyatt waved one manicured hand back the way Chase’d come. “About fifteen feet and crawled back this way. They shot him twice more as he crawled. The last bullet, the one to his head, likely killed him where he ended up.”

“Why do you figure a they?” Enrique spoke the question Chase’d been thinking.

Wyatt glared, like she thought Enrique yanked her instead of just asking the first obvious question. Her response was clipped with the efficiency of a woman used to being treated as slightly inferior to the men she outranked. “Rodrigo’s a big guy, a bad ass, ballsy guy. One man wouldn’t have been enough to intimidate him into coming down here. Drag him down, neither.”

This time Chase, keeping his tone as neutral as possible, asked the question. “What if he walked down on his own?” Or they had enough guys to make it impossible to fight.

“Hard to see someone who doesn’t want to be down here,” Enrique folded his arms over his chest, “being dragged down here.”

“Think he was meeting someone?” Chase asked the question of both detectives.

“I’d bet on that…” Wyatt’s mouth went tight. “Not a hundred percent thing, but damn good odds.”

Enrique paced a few steps, looking at the body from various angles. “I think someone he trusted lured him down, maybe.” Looking to Wyatt, his tone said he was asking her opinion, not overriding her. Careful not to disturb the ring of flowers, he squatted near Fuertes. “Or maybe someone he didn’t trust, but that he had to meet even if he didn’t want to.” Enrique turned his attention back to the corpse.

“So, Ochoa,” Wyatt studied Enrique as he studied Fuertes. The cool, calculated once up and once down echoed a woman used to sizing up co-workers as potential opponents. “What’s with the flowers? And the X’s all over him? You know about this shit right?”

“Some of it. The marigolds are a Mexican thing. Americans leave roses on graves, Mexicans leave marigolds. Why they’re with Fuertes, I don’t know.” Enrique’s gaze flicked up. “Those,” he traced the air indicating one of the marks on the dead man’s skin, “are the symbols of Eshu.”

Without thinking, Chase responded with a, “Bless you.”

That rated Chase a glare from Enrique and a snort from Wyatt. “I didn’t sneeze.” Enrique coughed. “Eshu, also Exu, Echu or a bunch of other variants, is a deity in a lot of Afro-Caribbean religions.”

“Eshu?”

“Eshu is the devil…sort of.” Standing, Enrique crossed his arms over his chest and thought for a moment. Slowly, like he felt a little embarrassed at knowing what he knew. “Okay, the quick and dirty version. Religions of the Caribbean come from slave religions that got all mixed up with Catholicism. The master said pray to his god, and he was likely Spanish or Portuguese. So, his god had saints who all meant something and you prayed to them. It wasn’t so hard to say this saint of water is this god of water, at least if you didn’t want to get beaten for praying to your old traditional gods. Stick their statues in with your symbols and everyone thinks it’s cute that the dumb slaves like the statues.”

“And Eshu is the devil?” Wyatt didn’t sound like she was buying.

Without seeming to take offense, Enrique shrugged. “Eshu is like Lucifer because he’s always in conflict with Ologun the creator. But in many Caribbean religions Eshu is also the only one who speaks directly to Ologun. If you want something done, you ask Eshu…” he smirked. “Just be careful of what he asks for in return.”

You can buy it here!