Mexico City Day Of The Dead Parade Now A Major Cultural Event Inspired By James Bond

While the Day of the Dead is a centuries-old tradition in Mexico, its parade on Saturday in the capital is a newer addition -- thanks to Bond, James Bond.

The Day of the Dead, when Mexico honours its dead ancestors by blending pre-Columbian traditions with the Christian All Saints' Day, has long been a family affair. Relatives visit cemeteries and set up altars with food and other items their loved ones enjoyed in life.

Then came 007.

The 2015 Bond film "Spectre" opens with the British spy walking through a crowd dressed as the dead in downtown Mexico City. On Saturday, giant skeletons, floats and performers in feathered headdresses and masks filled the streets of Mexico City for the 10th anniversary of the Day of the Dead parade. Musicians and acrobats joined the floats, giving the downtown avenues a carnival atmosphere.

Portuguese tourist Ana Suares, 32, called the parade fascinating. 

"People happy, the costumes, the flowers. It is quite wild! People coming together to remember those who are no longer here but are in our hearts," she told AFP.

Isabel Halsey, a 37-year-old from the United States, put it this way: "It is colourful, smelly, dramatic, full of people of different nationalities and personalities. I love it!"

Miguel Angel Mancera, who organised the first parade while serving as Mexico City mayor from 2012 to 2018, said the procession quickly exploded in popularity.

"Everyone started asking me, 'What about the parade? When's the parade?'" he said. "It was an adventure."

City officials expected more than half a million visitors from Mexico and abroad to watch this year's parade, which fell on the same weekend as the city's Formula One Grand Prix race. Some of the giant figures used in the Bond film appeared in the first parade in 2016.

"It's a very, very big thing now," Mancera said. "It's something I'm really proud of."

An 11-story sculpture of Catrina -- an elegantly dressed female skeleton -- stands in the Zocalo, the capital's main square, as part of this year's festivities. What was once a "more intimate" celebration has become "a mass event," said Roberto Montalvo, an academic at the Iberoamerican University. Tourists now pack some cemeteries, competing with families for space. "Do we adapt the visit to the ritual, or does the ritual adapt to the visitor?" Montalvo asked.

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