By Kristian Cerino

POMUCH, Mexico – The dead in the Maya community of Pomuch, in southeastern Mexico, each year return to the world of the living thanks to a strange tradition of hazy origin according to which their loved ones disinter them, clean their bones and pamper them with different offerings to show their love and veneration.

In a strange custom showing the peculiar relationship of Mexicans with the beyond, this town of 8,000 residents located in the state of Campeche this week awaited with great expectation the arrival of the Day of the Dead, which in Mexico is celebrated on Nov. 1-2.

“If we don’t do it, it’s like we’re forgetting our loved ones, like they don’t exist,” 70-year-old Manuel Canche told Efe, defending the ritual as a sign of sincere love toward his departed relatives.

Canche recalled how, ever since he was a boy, his father took him to the cemetery to brush the dirt and dust off the skulls and other bones of his grandparents with brushes and clothes.

Once cleaned, the bones are placed in decorated ossuaries or wooden boxes and the contents are displayed with pride at different spots around the cemetery in the tropical community located 45 kilometers (28 miles) northeast of Campeche city.

Before exhuming the remains of the recently deceased, the residents of Pomuch, in addition to going into mourning, must wait until three years after the deaths of their relatives. Once this condition has been complied with, they open up the crypts where they have been resting, collect the bones and place them in urns or ossuaries.

The cleaning activities, which are carried out daily from Oct. 26-31, begin with washing the crypts and the boxes containing the remains, followed by replacing the shrouds enclosing the bones, if they have already been disinterred in previous years. The cloth usually is embroidered with the name of the deceased.

After cleaning the bones and returning them to the resting place, the visitors prepare to share with the dead the offerings they have brought for them, the traditional tamales and the “pibipollo,” a mixture of different types of poultry wrapped in a tortilla.

“The old shroud is thrown away and they are covered with the new one; and with that done, prayers are said for the departed,” said Maria Candelaria Lopez, a woman who prepares coconut candies for a living ... and for the dead. “They eat them, too,” she declared.

More than in most other cemeteries, in the graveyard at Pomuch smells clearly of death, but the stench is not as strong as one might think since many exhumations are performed on different days of the year and not only on these particular days.

The origin of the tradition is uncertain. According to elderly members of the community, it began decades ago when the cemetery became filled because of an epidemic.

Others believe that it is one more sign of the syncretism between Christianity and the Maya civilization, which held sway in southeastern Mexico and part of Central America from about 2,000 years before Christ up to the 15th century.

In any case, the exhumations of the remains and their subsequent placement in urns provides more space where those who will die this coming year can be buried temporarily.