In the city of Oaxaca, the sun warms your skin just right, not too hot, not too cold. Spanish footprints are everywhere: colonial architecture, cobblestone streets, grand churches. The city is a mosaic of time, where indigenous roots and colonial remnants exist side by side. The zócalo is alive with music and conversation, framed by heavy stone buildings, arcades, and wrought-iron balconies. The Church of Santo Domingo rises proudly, its intricate baroque façade and gilded interior a monument to beauty, history, and imposition.
And yet, if you pay close attention, there’s something else. A presence. The old spirits are still here, lingering in the stone, drifting in the air, thick with copal smoke.
Above, colorful papel picado flutters gently in the breeze. Cowboy-hatted men lean against sunlit walls. There’s a photograph at every turn. But underneath it all, there’s a hum, a quiet, steady hum that can’t quite be explained.
In Teotitlán del Valle, a wind comes down from the mountains every year on the first of November. That’s what Raúl tells me.
“But that’s the old way,” he adds.
Now it’s the crack of fireworks, like thunder, the sound echoes in the hills, celebration, that welcomes the spirits.
Still, I prefer to believe the wind keeps coming. Maybe it mixes with the noise and music, but it’s there.
Women move quickly through the final preparations for Day of the Dead: tamales, chocolate, flowers. Inside homes, the altars glow with candles and offerings. The rooms grow thick with incense. Some spirits come from deep down, like dreams. Others seem to take a shorter path back. You can see it in the faces of daughters, sons, husbands, wives. Some memories have hardened into wisdom. Others still sting. But we raise our mezcal anyway, to toast, to remember, to cheer.
Teotitlán has always been a town of artisans. Families here have passed down trades, rug weaving, chocolate making, candle crafting, for generations. Perfecto’s family is one of them. Four, maybe five generations deep.
He tells me stories of the past, his face lighting up with the kind of joy only memory can stir.
He remembers being seven years old in 1968, when an Italian photographer visited and took a photo of his family. Years later, the man returned to Mexico and they became friends.
“That picture now hangs on the altar,” Perfecto says proudly. “It’s the only photo I have of myself as a child.”
Then, after a pause, his expression shifts. “I have a complicated relationship with my memories,” he admits.
“I didn’t like candle-making back then. My family was strict. It wasn’t something I enjoyed.”
It wasn’t until he met Rosa, his wife, that something changed.
She loved the work. She brought warmth into the craft, into the home.
She passed away just three months before our visit. But her presence is everywhere, especially in the delicate candles now shaped by her daughters, the true maestras of the house.
Leticia, one of them, shows me how it’s done. Her hands move with grace and clarity. She speaks with a calm precision, a quiet pride. Her face holds all of it: focus, sadness, devotion and focus.
“I like decorating,” she says. “My sister prefers to make them from scratch. It’s the perfect match.”
In Leticia’s house, kindness feels like something you could hold in your hands. It lives in the warmth of her voice, the gentleness of her gestures, the care in every drop of hot wax. And in the memory of Rosa, whose spirit lingers in every corner.
The cemetery is small, intimate. We walk slowly between the graves, recognizing familiar faces from the last few days. People we’ve visited in their homes, shared meals with, listened to. Now, beneath flickering candlelight, we meet again.
Someone invites us to sit. Mezcal is poured. A guitar appears. A melody rises.
The songs are old, full of longing, joy, and remembrance.
Each sip of mezcal feels like a bridge: between now and then, between here and there, between the living and the dead.
And somehow, it all feels natural.
Here, remembrance isn’t solemn or sterile. It’s lived. Shared. Sung.
Death isn’t feared. It’s recognized. Welcomed.
The walk back is slow. The air still carries the echoes, laughter, a line from a song, the hush of voices that linger just out of reach. The candles flicker in my memory, lighting more than graves. They illuminate something deeper. Something I can’t quite name.
Oaxaca sleeps. A dog barks in the distance. A broom sweeps stone.
The scent of damp earth, wax, and incense clings to the night.
The mezcal settles into my bones.
And I think, maybe this is what the celebration is really about.
Not just remembering the dead, but being with them.
Acknowledging that they’re still here, in the stories, in the songs, in the silence.
That memory is not nostalgia. It’s the architecture of culture.
It’s the bridge we walk to carry the past forward. It’s how we become wiser.
“Wisdom comes from memory”.
-Pasquale Verdicchio
Photos and text: Jorge Delgado-Ureña, during the Day of The Dead Workshop 2024.
Want to Photograph Día de los Muertos with Us?
This October, we’re heading back to Oaxaca for our annual Day of the Dead workshop. It’s an immersive, hands-on experience designed for photographers who want to tell deeper, more human stories.
You’ll learn to move with intention, connect with the culture, and build a body of work that truly means something.
Spots are limited—and they always fill up fast.
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love the title!
Beautiful pictures and accompanying story. It is a special place, thank you for helping me journey back to my trip there. I hope to return again soon!