Research Question - Could the Mexican Day of the Dead be an ancient tradition of human sacrifice?
Audience: People online
Duration: 6 min
Take home message - Aztec used to sacrifice children
One sentence description - Mexicans are proud of their Aztec or mayan heritage, but tend to look away at the fact that both cultures performed humans sacrifices.
Script
Since I was a little girl growing up in Mexico, I’ve been fascinated by the Day of the Dead Celebration.
It was the time for me to see little skulls depicting the everyday life, dancing, singing, getting married and having fun.
For me skulls are cute, I grew up laughing at death. Until I came to Australia that I realized that death is a forbidden word.
I’m so used to seeing skulls that I started to question this tradition, and it took me back to the ancient customs of the Aztecs and the Mayas. In almost every temple there is sculptures of skulls, but just last year under the Templo Mayor in Mexico City, archaeologists found 30 human skulls, belonging to men, women and children, all lined up just like the drawings of the conquistadores.
We Mexicans are proud of our Aztec or mayan heritage, but tend to look away at the fact that both cultures performed humans sacrifices.
This time I’m going to confront this belief and I want to see the reaction of the people when I mention the possibility that the Mexican Day of the Dead could be linked to a human sacrifice tradition.
End script
The spanish attempted to wipe out as much Aztec and Mayan culture as they could, almost all of their codices, sculpture, and other records were burned or smashed.
The Spanish viewed the Aztecs and Mayans as barbarians. They were horrified for the human sacrifice rituals.
From a modern perspective, human sacrifice can seem especially cruel. But from the Aztecs and Mayans point of view, it was nothing sadistic, savage or barbaric, it was just a religious obligation that they took very serious.
Death by sacrifice was more honorable than in battle. In most cases sacrificial victims went willingly, and in return the captive was promised an afterlife in a world with the sun himself.
The pre-Hispanic concept of death as an energy link, as a germ of life, may very well explain how the skull came to be a symbol of death. That symbol has been recreated and assimilated in all aspects of Mexican life.
Why we don’t fear death, we were used to, the aztecs told us that by dying and sacrifice our body to the gods we are helping the sun rise again for the next generation to survive
Timeline
I will have a better idea when the footage has been done what kind of material I’m going to get
This project can be feasible due to the fact that I’ll be in Mexico during this celebration
Using my jvc video camcorder when things are a bit shaky
Dslr for interview because the picture is more clear
Sound could be recorded externally
Problems
Interviews with sunlight or indoor
I’m not travelling with lights, so there might be a problem setting the interviews and finding a location for them
Sources:
http://www.famsi.org/index.html
https://decipherment.wordpress.com/page/2/
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