Maria Luisa Euan looked on tenderly as her second husband gently cleaned the pile of bones that was once her first.
With a white cloth, Jorge Jurado wiped down a femur, dusted vertebrae and polished each of the scattered teeth of his wife’s deceased husband, one by one.
“It’s with love and affection,” said Jurado, 66, brushing the dirt from what appeared to be a finger. “When she feels happy, I feel happy, too.”
Euan agreed. Days earlier, they had cleaned the bones of Jurado’s first wife.
“At our age, we don’t get jealous,” said Euan, 69. “And with the dead who have gone to rest, even less.”
Here in Pomuch, a town of 10,000 on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, exhumation is an act of love.
It is also a ritual of increasing interest to tourists, and to local officials who sense an opportunity — a point of rising tension in Pomuch, one of the final places in Mexico with a living tradition of cleaning the bones of the dead.
Every year in the weeks leading up to Mexico’s famed Day of the Dead holiday — celebrated this weekend — residents of Pomuch head to the cemetery to unpack boxes of disassembled skeletons and dust off their loved ones’ bones, in a ritual intended to honour and soothe the spirits of their ancestors.
The ritual has roots in the Maya civilisation that dominated the region until Spanish colonisers arrived in the 1500s.
Mexico is built on the mixing of indigenous and Hispanic cultures, and that is true in Pomuch, too. Much of the town’s population has Mayan heritage and is deeply Catholic. Several residents cleaning bones this week cited the Bible as the basis.
Lázaro Hilario Tuz Chi, a Pomuch historian and anthropologist, said Pomuch has long had a rich history with the dead. It was once an important stop on a Maya route to a holy burial ground and a producer of burial shrouds. He said that helped breed a culture focused on the afterlife, which has become even stronger over the past two decades as he and other locals have promoted the bone-cleaning tradition.
As a result, Pomuch has recently landed on the Day of the Dead tourist circuit.
Last week, tour groups of French and Italian tourists spilled out of vans in front of the small tortilla shops across from Pomuch’s cemetery. Couples and families arrived in rental cars. One Dutch couple said they were there on the advice of ChatGPT. Drones sometimes hovered overhead.
The Pomuch cemetery, where concrete ossuaries each hold several boxes of bones.
The cemetery is a labyrinth of narrow passageways between multicoloured,
concrete ossuaries, each full of boxes with skulls peeking out. The tight quarters meant that, as locals laid out the remains of their loved ones,
tourists often crowded around. Some asked permission to record with their limited Spanish or via their tour guide, while others simply arrived with their phones already filming.
This year, local officials tried to capitalise on the growing interest.
On October 21, Pomuch’s local government posted on social media that it was offering a chance for people to observe and “participate” in the bone cleaning for 30 pesos, or about $1.60.
Pomuch residents quickly criticised the idea of turning their tradition into a tourist attraction, and many were confused over whether they would have to pay to enter the cemetery.
“The ritual is something totally private. It belongs to the family and their deceased,” said Carlos Ucán, a state lawmaker from Pomuch who criticised the plan on the floor of the legislature. “Many open it up and invite others to see, but even that is already crossing the fine line between sharing and monetising.”
Maria Eredina Has Colli cleaning the bones of her late husband. As part of their welcoming of the spirits, residents tidy up tombs at the cemetery in Pomuch.
Eventually the local government reversed course. Pomuch’s mayor, Cevas Yam, said his team had communicated poorly, but that he still wanted to find a solution that balances economic opportunity with cultural preservation.
“I want this tradition to be made known,” said Canul, just before holding up his grandfather’s skull for several French tourists to photograph. “We’re happy you’re here.”
Not all neighbours were as comfortable. A local handyman, José Fernandez, said his business charging 40 pesos, or about $2, to clean a box of bones was thriving. He said that he cleans roughly 200 remains a year, and that many clients hire him to avoid being under the gaze of outsiders themselves.
New York Times News Service