Mexico officially recognises sixty-eight indigenous languages with some 364 variants, and around seven million people speak one. Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya, Mixtec, Zapotec and Tzeltal are the most widespread. This is not residual folklore: in parts of Oaxaca and Chiapas, Spanish is the second language.
Almost everything a visitor recognises as "Mexican tradition" is syncretism — a pre-Hispanic layer under a Catholic one, with neither having erased the other. Seeing that double layer changes what you are looking at.
Day of the Dead, which is not Halloween
Between 31 October and 2 November the dead are believed to return and visit the living. They are received with an ofrenda: a photograph, water, salt, pan de muerto, the food the person liked, candles to mark the path, and cempasúchil, the orange marigold whose scent guides souls home. The first of November is for children, the second for adults.
It is not a festival of fear, and it is not a celebration of death. It is a family visit. In Oaxaca, Pátzcuaro and Mixquic people spend the night in the cemetery, cleaning graves and eating beside them. Go with respect: you can photograph the scene, not the face of someone praying, and never without asking. UNESCO inscribed it as Intangible Heritage in 2008.
The Virgin of Guadalupe
On 12 December several million pilgrims reach the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, many on foot from other states and some covering the last stretch on their knees. Guadalupe is the figure that fused indigenous and Catholic worlds — she appeared, in the account, to an indigenous man, on a hill where a female deity had been venerated — and she is the country's most powerful symbol, above the flag itself.
Other traditions you will meet
- Mariachi, from Jalisco, UNESCO-listed since 2011. In Mexico City's Plaza Garibaldi you hire a group by the song, around 150 to 250 pesos
- Lucha libre, sport and theatre at once, with masks as inherited identity. Arena México on Friday nights: tickets from 100 pesos, loud and family-friendly
- Voladores de Papantla, the Totonac rite in which five men spin suspended from a thirty-metre pole. Also UNESCO-listed
- Posadas, 16 to 24 December, with processions, piñatas and hot punch
- Charrería, the national equestrian tradition, in lienzos charros on Sundays
Crafts, and how to buy them well
- Alebrijes from Oaxaca, copal-wood figures carved and painted by hand; the ones from San Martín Tilcajete are the serious pieces
- Black pottery from San Bartolo Coyotepec and talavera from Puebla, the latter with protected origin status
- Textiles from Teotitlán del Valle, dyed with cochineal and indigo, and the huipiles of Chiapas and Oaxaca, where each pattern identifies a community
- Silver from Taxco, stamped 0.925
- Buy at the workshop or the village market, not the coastal boutique. You will pay less and the money reaches the maker. Light bargaining is normal in a market; it is not in a workshop where someone has just explained their technique
How to behave
- Ask before photographing people, especially in indigenous communities. In some Chiapas villages it is forbidden and taken very seriously
- In the churches of San Juan Chamula nothing may be photographed, and the rule is enforced without exceptions
- Manners are formal and warm at once: greet the room when you enter anywhere, say buen provecho when passing someone eating, and mande rather than "what?"
- Do not use "Indian" for indigenous people; it is pejorative. Say indígena or the name of the specific people