Day of the Dead figures and the people who made them

For this year's Day of the Dead, "Día de los Muertos", we present four figures by three artisans in two states. Here are their stories.

The Stilt Dancer Catrina, by Martín Melchor Ángeles and Hermelinda Portega Ramírez

Martín Melchor Ángeles lives and works in San Martín Tilcajete, Oaxaca. Among his carnival figures are "Zancudos", stilt dancers, a specialty of Zaachila, south of Oaxaca City. The word also means mosquitoes, which have long legs too. This stilt dancer is a Catrina, the skeleton dressed as a woman of society that goes back to the prints of José Guadalupe Posada around 1910.

The figure is 51 cm high and stands on stilts painted in green, blue and red stripes. The face is a white skull with eye sockets painted violet and rimmed in green, and red lips. She wears a blue hat with a dotted red band and small flowers on the brim. One skeleton-hand holds up a parasol painted in orange, blue, pink and green on a green stick, and a small woven basket hangs from the other arm.

Rather than painted clothes, the top and the wide trousers are cut and sewn from real red cloth printed with small white flowers, with a blue sash at the waist. Hermelinda Portega Ramírez, Martín's wife, sewed them and painted the figure. She makes the clothes for all his stilt figures, each time in a different fabric, either a traditional costume or whatever material she has to hand, and paints them as well. She does not sign them; only Martín does. The two of them work in the shade of the porch of their house in San Martín Tilcajete. We wrote about their stilt dancers and "Tiliches" earlier this year.

Two dancers by Marco Antonio Castillo

Marco Antonio Castillo works in Izúcar de Matamoros, in the state of Puebla, not in Oaxaca. He is the fifth generation of the Castillo workshop, and his figures are "Barro Policromado": the local red clay, modeled by hand, with the small details formed in molds and attached, then given a white ground coat and painted. We wrote about him and the workshop in August. Both figures here are signed by him.

The Danzante Jaguar, 28 cm high, is a dancer from the "Danza de los Tecuanes", a hunt in which the dancers pursue a jaguar that has been taking the village's animals. "Tecuani" means the one who eats people. The figure wears a spotted suit with patterned cuffs and an orange jaguar mask with black spots, pink ears and a pink tongue hanging out, and a fringe of fiber around the mask. A long braided cord, the whip the dancer cracks to imitate thunder and the roar of the animal, lies over one shoulder and trails on the ground. The hands, and the feet in their sandals, are bones.

The Danzante de los Diablos, 31.5 cm high, is a dancer from the "Danza de los Diablos", which is danced in Izúcar de Matamoros at carnival and at Day of the Dead. The mask is black, with two tall ears, curling orange horns dotted in turquoise and red, red eyes and a row of white teeth, and a beard of the same fiber. He wears a blue vest trimmed in green and orange over shaggy brown trousers and holds his whip in both bone hands.

Jaguar with Companion, by Agustín Cruz Tinoco

Agustín Cruz Tinoco grew up farming in San Juan Otzolotepec, in the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca, and learned to carve after he moved his family down to the Central Valley at the edge of Oaxaca City. His daughter Edilma Cruz Prudencio paints his carvings, and it was her painting that made his work better known. She does not sign them.

Jaguar with Companion is 45 cm long and 34 cm high, and it is two figures joined by a white rope. The jaguar is a skeleton. The body is bone-colored with the bones painted on in dark brown, the ribs are stripes of green, pink, purple, orange and blue, and the neck is a stack of painted discs, so the head can move. The head is a jaguar's, orange with black spots, the mouth open and the teeth showing. At the other end of the rope stands a skeleton in a flat hat, a sleeveless shirt in vertical stripes and green patterned shorts, with bare bone feet and a bag over his shoulder, and a small fox looks out of the bag. Agustín Cruz Tinoco brings to Day of the Dead the humor of his Christmas pieces, in which the Holy Family rides a ferris wheel, bicycles, a car or an aeroplane.

The four pieces

All four are in the shop at the moment: Stilt Dancer 'Catrina', 51 cm, by Martín Melchor Ángeles and Hermelinda Portega Ramírez; Danzante Jaguar, 28 cm, and Danzante de los Diablos, 31.5 cm, by Marco Antonio Castillo; and Jaguar with Companion, 45 cm, by Agustín Cruz Tinoco.