Día de los Muertos: altars and memory in Mexico
I arrived in Oaxaca on the last day of October, when the whole city already smelled of marigolds. They were everywhere — heaped on market stalls, spilling out of buckets, woven into arches over doorways. That deep, dusty orange the Mexicans call cempasúchil, the flower of the dead. I'd come for Día de los Muertos thinking I knew roughly what to expect, and within an hour I understood I knew nothing at all.
I want to say this plainly, because I got it wrong in my own head before I came: this is not Halloween. It is not a costume, not a spooky theme, not an exotic backdrop for a photo. On the 1st and 2nd of November — All Saints' and the Day of the Dead — Mexican families welcome their departed home for one night. The dead are not feared here. They are missed, and they are invited back. I spent three days learning to see death the way Oaxaca sees it, and it rearranged something in me.
The ofrenda, and everything it holds
The heart of it all is the ofrenda — the altar each family builds for the people they've lost. The first one I was shown into belonged to a woman named Lourdes, who waved me up her stairs as if I were an old neighbour. Photographs of her parents and a brother leaned against the wall. In front of them: candles, a glass of water, a small dish of salt, a sweet round loaf of pan de muerto dusted with sugar, and the things the dead had loved in life — a packet of cigarettes, a bottle of mezcal, a worn deck of cards. And marigolds, always marigolds, their petals scattered in a path to the door so the souls can find their way back by the scent.
Nothing on the altar is decoration. The water is for the thirst of the long journey. The salt purifies. The candle is a light to guide them. Even the sugar skulls — the calaveras, grinning and painted in impossible colours — aren't morbid up close; they carry a name across the forehead, the name of someone loved. La Catrina, the elegant skeleton in her great feathered hat, is not a ghoul but a gentle joke: rich or poor, we all end up the same, so we may as well meet death dressed well and smiling.
The night in the cemetery
On the night of the 1st, I went with a small group to a village graveyard outside the city. I'd half expected something performed for visitors. It was the opposite. Families sat on blankets beside the graves of their grandparents, candles guttering in jam jars, a guitar somewhere in the dark, the low murmur of conversation — to each other and, just as easily, to the dead. Someone had brought a thermos of hot chocolate. A grandmother was telling her grandson about an uncle he'd never met. It was not sad. It was the most tender thing I have ever been allowed to witness.
« The dead are not feared here. They are missed, and they are invited back — one night a year, by candlelight. »
I'll be honest about the practical side too, because it caught me out. Mexico is outside the EU, so there's no roam-like-at-home here — my home plan would have been useless or extortionate, and I was glad I'd sorted a local eSIM before landing. And in those village vigils the network simply buckles: thousands of phones in a place that was barely covered to begin with, and the signal drops to nothing. The map I'd downloaded the night before, on the guesthouse wifi, was the only reason I found the cemetery and, hours later, the road back. Out there, you plan for no signal — you don't fight for it.
Where to be, and how to behave
Oaxaca and the island of Janitzio on Lake Pátzcuaro are the two places most associated with these nights, and for good reason — the candlelit vigils there are extraordinary. The big Mexico City parade is a different, more recent thing, popularised by a film and now a genuine spectacle of giant Catrinas down the Paseo de la Reforma; fun, but not the quiet heart of the holiday. UNESCO lists this whole tradition as intangible cultural heritage, and standing in that graveyard I understood exactly why.
The most important thing I learned wasn't where to go but how to be there. These are real graves, real grief, real families on the one night their dead come home. Ask before you photograph anyone or any altar — and accept no as a complete answer. Better still, during the vigils, put the phone away entirely. I took a handful of pictures early in the evening and then pocketed my camera for good, and the night opened up the moment I stopped trying to capture it.
📶 Sarah's tip
For Día de los Muertos, Mexico is outside Europe — there's no roam-like-at-home, so a local eSIM you activate before you land saves you both the arrival panic and the roaming bill. Then plan for the crowds: in the Oaxaca and Pátzcuaro vigils, thousands of phones swamp an already thin network and your signal will vanish, so download an offline map and your accommodation details while you're still on wifi. And the real tip — during the cemetery vigils, switch the phone off and just be present; it's a family's intimate night, not content. Check your phone's compatibility in 30 seconds here and find your plan on the destinations page (for a broader European trip, an EU/EEA plan works too).
What I take away
I came to Oaxaca to see a festival and left having been taught something I didn't know I needed. We hide our dead away; here they set a place for them at the table and tell their stories by candlelight, and the grief is somehow lighter for being shared in the open. I think about Lourdes' altar more than I expected to — the glass of water, the cigarettes, the marigold path to the door. I no longer think of remembering as something sad. I think of it as setting out a light, and leaving the door open.
— Sarah, in Oaxaca, with marigold petals stuck to my shoes and a fuller heart.