The feast for the dead: cinnamon, anise, sugar, moles and a departure from everyday life: rituals to remember the dead and the role of food in the Day of the Dead

This paper shows that the Taste of the dead, defined as the practices that are associated with food offerings to the dead in Mexico, is created since childhood in a learned ritual in which foods acts a as a facilitator of the memory process that links the dead and the alive. This process is located in a broader context of practices that shape the ritual in a multi-sensory environment that imprints a process of memory and remembrance in the brain. Moreover, the flexibility of this ritual to take globalized influences, foods and discourses (as in the names of recipes) allows it to perpetuate itself and thus continue to play a central role in the calendar of festivities in Mexico. Food is in this sense a gustatory-visual-olfactory social artifact that is valued and requires an extra investment and effort to be made. An extra effort that is necessary as it links the need for nourishment of the dead that is fulfilled by the alive while they remember. This process of remembrance allows for the dead to be part of the social realm of the alive. Food acts, in this sense as a mediator. By exciting multiple senses it imprints the brain with memories and the calendar with a festivity to look for, one that has transcended globalization, clashes of cultures, uneven structures of power and tourism. One that has been able to hybridize and constitute a central piece in the Mexican identity.