Animism and keeping the spirits alive

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There is a part of the cemetery which is dedicated to the burial of children, it is common for mothers to come to the grave every week (especially for still born babies), usually on a Sunday to lay fresh flowers and speak to the dead baby, telling the baby all that is happening in the family as if they were still part of it. It is typical for the family to have specific rituals for keeping the dead alive with them, and its common for families to tend graves every Sunday. One example I saw was a grave of a wife who’d husband had died. As her husband liked to drink beer every Sunday, she would come to his grave with a beer every Sunday, drink it and talk to him. In the end his grave was a mass of empty beer bottles and became famous. Another example of keeping the spirits alive is for example, on the side of roads (especially in the Andes where cars have slipped off the edge or people have died of drought) people build graves at the spot on the road where their loved one had died, and they build it in the theme of how they died, for example many graves are covered with plastic bottles and these graves represent peope who died of drought, so now that the person has passed on, the people believe in giving the spirit the thing it lacked, so in the case of drought it would be water.

HOW TO DIE A SAINT

To die a saint you have to be very innocent (often a child) and die in very tragic and violent circumstances. One example we were shown was of a young boy who made his living by selling sweets and whilst saving up the little money he had, he was kidnapped by a stranger and killed for the few coins he had and in a very violent way. That in itself doesn’t make him a saint, but he becomes a saint by people taking about it and spreading the word creating a folk story or legend. It is popular to die a saint because you are then considered to get closer to God in heaven.

MY OPINION ON DEATH

I’m not really fond of keeping spirits alive and I’m not too comfortable about going to the graveyard every week to talk to the dead. Whilst I think celebrating somebody’s life is great and keeping their memory alive is healthy, I believe time is better spent embracing life whilst you have life and concentrate on the people around you and enjoy your life with them. When people die you have more time to give to the remaining people in your life, if everybody lived forever how would we ever have enough time to give to every important person in our lives and work at the same time. No, unlike the Chileans you wouldn’t catch me spending my Sunday at a graveyard having a party and talking to the dead, even if all the shops do close on a Sunday

EXPLANATIONS BY LOCAL TOUR GUIDES ON THE OFF BEAT TOUR

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