Each year on Nov. 1 and 2, millions of people across Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America celebrate Día de los Muertos or Day of the Dead. This annual holiday involves family reunions, parades, costumes, and face-painting to honor deceased family, friends, and ancestors.
Nieman Reports spoke to photographer Greta Rico on traveling to Atlixco, a town in the Mexican state of Puebla, to photograph the annual harvest of cempasúchil flowers, a type of marigold. These flowers traditionally grace altars, shrines, and gravesites throughout the country, as their sweet aroma is believed to help the spirits of loved ones return to Earth and reunite with their families.
Rico’s photography highlights issues surrounding gender inequality in Mexico especially in sectors like farming where unequal pay reflects national trends of women laborers being paid less for their work. Studies show that Mexican women shoulder 77% of all unpaid labor in their households, which is much higher than other Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
In Mexico, Day of the Dead is our biggest celebration as a country. We believe that our loved ones and family members who have already died are coming to visit us, once a year, on Nov. 1. To prepare, we make their favorite foods, arrange the flowers they loved, and put the games and trinkets they had a fondness for on an altar. These traditions vary depending on the region in Mexico, but it’s very common for the altars to be filled with candles, flowers, and colorful ornaments. We gather with our friends and family members, our relatives’ friends, and we wait for [our deceased family members] to come. It is a very exciting, happy tradition. Even though the holiday is about death, it’s about celebrating the love and memories of our loved ones who have already passed away.
As I grew up and currently live in Mexico City, I’ve grown accustomed to seeing flower vendors fill the streets in the weeks leading up to Day of the Dead each year. After all, floral arrangements are a main component to the altars we decorate for the holiday, and we always choose the beautiful, bright cempasúchil blooms for their strong, aromatic scent. The cempasúchil is named for the indigenous Nahuatl (or Aztec) word [which means “20 flowers,” and is meant to evoke its numerous petals.]
In 2017, out of sheer curiosity, I decided to strike up a conversation with some of the cempasúchil vendors at different markets. I asked them, “Where are you traveling from? Where do you grow these flowers?” All of the vendors explained that they were farmers from a community near Atlixco. It’s a city in the state of Puebla, which is nicknamed “the city of flowers.” I wanted to get to know the farmers that made this integral part of the holiday possible, so I made plans to document the flower harvests next year.
Atlixco, which is named after the Nahuatl [phrase for “water in the valley”] is a one hour drive from Mexico City. When I arrived in October 2018 at one of the flower farms in the area, I was surprised to see that most of the people in the fields were women and their children. While the women were cutting flowers from their stems, I saw their children playing and running up and down the rows of cempasúchils. Later, the farmers explained to me that working the harvest was a convenient source of income as they’re allowed to bring their children, too. Daycare is inaccessible, so some women find jobs in the informal economy, like at the farms, where their children can tag along. When the harvest wraps up, some farmers involve their entire families (both parents and all the kids) to load the flowers on rental trucks and drive them to sell at markets in various cities.
I started to chat with some of the workers and exchanged some friendly banter with an older woman named Elia. She told me that the women in her family had worked in these same flower fields for years. When she was a child, her own grandmother taught her how to cut the stems of the cempasúchils properly. I asked Elia if I could take her picture, and she happily agreed. Despite the busyness of the scene — children running and shouting, and dozens of workers making their rounds in the fields — I zoomed in on Elia and snapped the photo.
Elia and all the women I met that day shared the same sense of pride and care when it came to their work. They knew that all the flowers they grew, harvested, and sold adorned the altars of thousands of Mexican families each year for Day of the Dead — which is undoubtedly an important aspect of the holiday.
Farming is contract work and it’s precarious, especially if you don’t own the land you’re working on. I learned that it’s common for men to be paid by the hour, but women are paid based on the amount of flowers they manage to cut — leading to a huge wage gap.
As a photojournalist and feminist educator, I’ve been documenting mainly the stories of women in my work, as well as indigenous and rural communities. I want to look at my culture and find the underreported, unexamined angles of our rich traditions. In Mexico, a woman’s work in the domestic sphere is rarely recognized. Gender inequality exists all around the world, but particularly in Mexican culture, the expectations for both women and men are still clearly divided in every aspect of society. My stories are trying to give value to the work of women, who make holidays like Day of the Dead possible, and for others to realize their labor sustains our culture.
As told to Megan Cattel
