The Government of Mexico City announced this Monday, October 16, the complete program of activities that are contemplated for the Day of the Dead Celebration in Mexico City 2023. Among them is one of the most loved by the public, since it has direct participation. This is the Mega Procession of the Catrinas 2023.
At the Mexico City Museum, the General Director of Community Festivals of the Ministry of Culture, Argel Gómez Concheiro, led the press conference in which the massive activities managed by the local government were presented.
“This year we celebrate twenty years since the Day of the Dead was declared a World Heritage Site, a reason to celebrate in a big way,”
Gómez Concheiro emphasized.
Mega Procession of the Catrinas 2023; what is your schedule and route
Born with the objective of honoring the traditional work of José Guadalupe Posada, the Mega Procession of the Catrinas was forged in the austerity of the civil organization, but currently brings together thousands of people, including participants and makeup artists, who walk through the main streets of Mexico City with the face characterized as catrín or catrina.
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For the 2023 edition, the appointment is next Sunday, October 22 at 6:30 p.m.. The starting point will be the Angel of Independence and the closing will take place for the first time in the capital’s Zócalo. This is the tenth edition of the event and you will be able to find characterists at different points. Don’t forget to wear your best clothing!
“Many attribute the Mega Procession of Catrinas to the fact that in Mexico they filmed 007: Specter, but I want to tell you that we were born in 2014; “we were born first,”
mentioned Jessica Esquivias, creator of the Catrinas Mega procession
The origin of the catrinas
José Guadalupe Posada was born in Aguascalientes in 1852, a time in which Mexican society sought to forge a national identity and was still facing strong political instability. He started his career at the newspaper The Jicote At age 19.
In addition to the great armed conflicts, numerous superstitions regarding the end of the century and the world, miracles, magic and natural phenomena lived in the Mexican imagination. All of this was captured by the creative spirit of Posada, who also added in La Catrina a political dimension that criticized the modernism and morality of the Porfirian government.
Although in life he never called any of his skulls “Catrina”, today “La Garbancera” – as he baptized her – is an icon on the Day of the Dead. and, for some, the precursor of the cult of Santa Muerte. However, “Catrina” is far from being a superfluous idol; Her image accidentally brings together countless symbols and meanings of a collective memory.
Curiously, Posada did not seek to make his work another expression of a tradition. Far from it, Their skulls are a satire of the aspiration of Mexicans, who try to appear more than they really are.
The caricatures of José Guadalupe Posada are a criticism of the class struggle enriched with humor. If today the Mexican laughs at death, in Posada’s engravings he laughs at his poverty, how he faces it and what he does to get out of it. His work is not a cult of death, it is a satire of the life of the Mexican, of the anguish that he suffers on a daily basis and how he makes fun of them.
Rodrigo Osegueda Philosopher by training. Contemplate the soul and imagination of Mexico.