The Day of the Dead parade was also Halloween.  Although originally associated with the church, All Hallow’s Eve, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day, have become unique celebrations in Mexico, not only of death but of life.  In addition to remembering loved ones who have passed on and visiting cemeteries, it is also an occasion to dress up and hit the streets. 

This year the festivities would be starting with a bang.  Although the parade didn’t start until noon, I was up at sunrise planning the day.  It was almost four miles to walk there.  My feet still hurt from the flight, but they didn’t have a say.  They were taking me to the parade.

To get to the Angel of Independence Monument, where the revelers would be gathering, I walked to Avenida de Insurgentes Sur and headed north.  My phone didn’t work and I didn’t have a map.  I hoped I’d come across a crowd when I got close enough.  There were signs of the holiday in every window I looked into. 

A coffee shop I stopped at had four figures spread out inside, a skeleton in a top hat and blue suit jacket, another in a lacy white dress, with marigolds tucked in her hat, a third was in native clothes, her face painted to look like a candy skull, and there was a third woman, this one with a feathered hat and boa around her neck. 

The graffiti outside the shop was just as freakish, a wolf with a burning third eye, a scorpion fish with a human body, sitting by a stream playing guitar, a heart crying blue tears, Icarus falling from the sky, a mask slipping off to reveal an ancient face of jewel.  There were copies of classical statues on the street, one of Venus de Menos, a poster for an upcoming Lucha Libre match that showed two masked wrestlers colliding in mid-air.

When I got close to the Paseo de Reforma I followed a family carrying folding chairs to the parade site.  I was three hours early.  Almost no one was there.  There was a photo exhibit of ordinary people, going about their daily business, with their faces painted to look like skulls.  I found this to be fascinatingly well-done and poignant.  There was a nurse, pilot, ballet dancer, boatman, paramedic, gravedigger, a baker, a secretary, a rock band, a priest, all transformed with black and white paint into creatures of the dead, yet continuing to go about their business as if nothing had changed.

Wandering on from there, I bought a silver half a skull mask that fit over my mouth and nose.  It didn’t look as good as I’d hoped, but still made me feel like a participant in the festivities, as opposed to just a spectator.  I walked all over the place, my toes painfully throbbing in my shoes and never staked out a place to sit.  Now people were beginning to arrive.  The curb and sidewalk were getting crowed. 

There were huge painted skulls on nearly every corner and another exhibition at the entrance of Chapultepec Park, this one with images of Day of the Dead from all over Mexico.  This featured skeleton dogs, two skeletons on bikes, and a statue of the Mayan snake goddess Coatlicue, surrounded by orange magnolias.

An hour before the parade got started, my feet already hurt almost too much to stand.  Now there was no place to see it from the sidewalk.  The crowd was fifteen to twenty feet deep.  People who knew better had brought stools and ladders to stand on.  Many people were using umbrellas to protect them from the sun.  The most intrepid of them were standing on the tops of the ladders, using the umbrellas at the same time. 

Most of the men had children on their shoulders.  The toughest of the lot had his wife on his shoulders and their kid was on her shoulders.  Triple-decker.  Everyone looked down the street in the direction that the parade was supposed to come.  There were more people waiting for the parade then all who have ever waited for the return of Christ.  After a while it began to feel like one big hoax.  Was there even a parade at all?  I was dizzy in my silver skull musk, my feet splitting open in my shoes like microwaved sausages.

Then there was the sound of a band, some military members coming around the Angel of Independence Monument.  I went over and stood on my tiptoes on the root of a tree, right beneath a miniature Zachaeus in a ghost mask.  There were some children carrying a sign.  I couldn’t read what it said.  There was more to see in the crowd then there was in the parade, scary characters dressed for Halloween, out posing for pictures with families.  A trio of zombie ghosts sat on a bench.  Next to them stood the sadistic clown from the movie It.

Everyone who had a phone was holding it up to take pictures.  What I ended up with was pictures of people taking pictures.  All I could see of the parade was a few heads here and there and the tops of some of the tallest floats.  There was a leaping dog, a tribe of hummingbird people, devil women who were waving, a skeleton in a black sombrero.

How did they fit into the procession?  What story were they trying to tell?  I had no idea, and suddenly that seemed astonishingly great.  What a total fiasco.

I got a few tamales and found a shadow on the sidewalk to sit and eat in.  They were Day of the Dead tamales, only the skeletons of chickens inside.  Then I got up and tried to walk back in the direction of the hotel, but went the opposite way.  At a park there was a folk band and an ofrenda that was set up in memory of the many citizens who’d gone missing over the years, often under shady circumstances.  My toes were so jammed up in the end of my shoes that I wanted to scream, and now, somehow, I’d gotten lost when all I needed to do was follow Avenida de Insurgentes back in the direction I’d come.

Before long I came to a Metro Station.  A policeman there said it would be easier to take the train back to my hotel than to walk there.  Seeing that the parade had just ended, the mobs waiting for the trains were insane.  The last time I’d been in Mexico City, I’d been pushed and fallen with three or four other men when the train had rounded a bend, and when I’d righted myself, my phone had gone missing. 

That wouldn’t happen this time.  I kept one hand in my pocket, holding onto my phone, and glared around the packed car, mad-dogging everyone from behind my silver death mask.  Who would even dare?  Didn’t they know I was loco in the coco.  Actually, I must have been.  There was no other way to explain it.