velaciones

All soul’s day, which Peruvians celebrate on November 2nd, is easily my favorite holiday here. Halloween isn’t too popular although I’ve heard that it is in Ecuador, but Peruvians tend to celebrate the two days afterwards a lot more. The first day is All Saint’s day- the day when people go to the cemetery to celebrate all of the saints and children that have passed away without sins. They call the babies “angelitos” because they died before they had time to commit sins, which I thought was interesting. People buy little “crowns” or wreaths of flowers and place them on the crosses and tombs.

Being lazy and tired from celebrating Halloween the night before, I did not care to join in the drinking and dancing that everyone else was partaking in. But starting the next morning, or All Soul’s Day- I was down. We started the morning by dropping off flowers at every dead family member’s grave between the two cemeteries in my district. This included both host grandpa’s, an uncle, some great grandparents and then distantly related people that I still to this day am not sure of who they are. After dropping the flowers off, we went home to have lunch and to chillax (abbreviation for chillout and relax). At around three, armed with candles, matches and cardboard boxes, we marched back to the cemetery to settle in for the evening.

Now first off, there are a lot of differences between a cemetery that you would find in the states and one you would find in Peru. In the states, the graves tend to be underground and covered with a nice area of grass or maybe a small tombstone. Here, unless you find buying matches a luxury, everyone has a “tomb” made for them. This is an aboveground grave, lined and topped off with cement. These cement structures can vary in decadence from just a sole cement-coffin to graves that have entire one-room houses built around them. I call those graves “shrines” and they kind of freak me out because they have iron-wrought fences around them and once I’m inside, I get claustrophobic and want out. I don’t like to be stuck under the same roof with a skeleton. Also, grass does not exist so just picture sand and dirt around the graves with little children running and climbing all over them. I felt badly for the people buried because I’m sure they don’t appreciate little children running all over their graves.

Now fortunately for my town, the cemetery just got electricity a few months ago, which allowed a mini-carnival to show up and set up shop outside the gates. I have never seen so much as a water fountain in a graveyard back home but here I had 10 different ladies trying to sell me fried chicken with French fries, two ice cream men on bicycles, three tent-restaurants offering everything from dried pig guts to birthday cake and maybe 50 kids with bags of popcorn and potato chips strung around their neck, walking through the cemetery and selling their goods like the beer men at baseball games. Talk about resting in peace. Oh yeah, there was beer for sale too.

So, Peruvians call All Soul’s Day “Velaciones” because everyone brings candles (velas in Spanish) to light at the graves all afternoon and through the evening. Some people stay all night. This in all honestly, became beautiful once the sun went down and you could see hundreds of people gathered around thousands of little candles in the graveyard. The cemetary is a ways from the actual town so other than the tent-restaurants, there isn’t any light except for the candles. I personally loved watching families and friends interact and hang out while waiting the candles to burn out and I thought to myself how nice this would be if it was customary to do this in the states. After a few hours of walking in between graves and socializing with people, I sat down with my host grandma and a few of my cousins to light candles next to her late-husband’s grave. At first I thought it was weird how everyone was just sitting on top of his cement box with his body inside, but being tired, I soon found myself actually lying down on it at one point. I used to hold my breath every time I passed a cemetery in the states- here I can actually go to sleep in them. The only thing I could not get over was how my host grandmother, who is still very much alive (as stated before, she is the town butcher), has already had her grave dug and made next to her late-husband’s. I mean, it’s topped off with a thin layer of cement that can be easily taken off but pretty much all that is lacking is my grandma actually in it. Does anyone else find this morbid? Best part is, we (including my grandma) are all SITTING and hanging out on it at one point or another. However, I’m pretty sure that isn’t customary because one of the Peruvians I was talking to that night told me they thought that was a very “triste” or sad thing to do. To make your own tomb before you, well, well you know what I mean. So that was weird.

After about six hours of this, or around 9 at night, I decided I was cold and tired and headed home with my host mom and sister. But I hear that some people stay up all night with their candles lit. I think that it could be worth it to stay here another year and do that again.