Some of the most well-known traditions and customs of Morelia are the Day of the Dead, carnival, Holy Week or its culinary tradition. Morelia is the capital of the current state of Michoacán and the place where the priest and soldier José María Morelos was born.
Valladolid - as the Spaniards called it - was built for Spanish families, and designed to reproduce European ways of life and customs.
Morelia downtown street
At that time, there were several indigenous ethnic groups that inhabited its geography - in addition to blacks and Creoles - who, in a long history of confrontations and integration, shaped the ethnic and cultural diversity that characterizes it today.
A journey through some of its main traditions and customs reflects the incomparable richness of this miscegenation.
Traditions and customs of Morelia
Culinary
Grains, vegetables and fruits, upon reaching the hands of Michoacan cooks, become intangible heritage of humanity.
Every year, both the typical and ancestral gastronomic art and international cuisine come together in Morelia to exchange their cultural memory and social identities.
The Traditional Cuisine Encounter, the Morelia international festival in Boca, and the Sweet and Handicraft Fair revive and invoke all a wisdom accumulated over centuries so that the land, the lakes and the sea dialogue through men and women. the women who have heard them.
The ancestral
The celebration of Holy Week also has particular notes. Theater plays and musical concerts alternate with traditional liturgical rites.
The Procession of Silence is one of the most impressive activities on Good Friday that has been practiced for forty years.
It begins with a ringing of cathedral bells. The penitents walk the streets and visit brotherhoods with long skirts and faces covered with hoods which they call hoods, many walk barefoot and carry bundles of wattles.
It is performed in the dark, and the mixture of sounds of drums and bells adds drama to the mystical event.
The cosmopolitan
There are two renowned international festivals. An international music festival and a film festival.
Each year the theme of the International Music Festival is defined - which can be to pay tribute to classical composers or to spread world music.
One example of its importance is that it has been the setting for world premieres. The International Film Festival, for its part, has the official recognition of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences of the United States of America, so that the winning short films in some categories can participate in the competition for their Oscars.
Modern, classical, and pre-Hispanic arts shape and reshape the spaces of this city that is not afraid to celebrate its diversity.
References
- Frasquet, I. (2007). The »other» Independence of Mexico: the first Mexican empire. Keys for historical reflection / The »other» Independence of Mexico: the First Empire of Mexico. Keys for a Historical Reflection. Complutense Journal of the History of America, 33, 35.
- Stanford, L. (2012). When the Marginal Becomes the Exotic. Reimagining Marginalized Foods: Global Processes, Local Places, 67.
- Brandes, S. (2009). Skulls to the living, bread to the dead: The Day of the Dead in Mexico and beyond. John Wiley & Sons
- Sayer, C. (2009). Fiesta: Days of the Dead & Other Mexican Festivals. University of Texas Press.
- Beezley, WH, Martin, CE, & French, WE (Eds.). (1994). Rituals of rule, rituals of resistance: public celebrations and popular culture in Mexico. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.