In Mexico the skeleton of the danse macabre, the skeleton of the “triumph of death,” has become a sugar candy. It has become a plaything, a caricature.

Why this caricature? The reasons for the contemporary Mexican's feeling about death must not be sought in some psychological defense mechanism consisting of macabre humor in face of an unhappy fate. One must not invoke the consequences of a pseudo-catholicism more or less colored by mystical masochism. Nor must one reduce it to the simple pagan heritage of a poorly defined indigenous past. One must go much further, because, after all, what is dying?