Catrina Mania VI: Catrina Takes San Antonio

Introduction

The character known as Catrina has been the face of Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) for a good part of the last century. As Day of the Dead has grown in worldwide popularity, she has become a pre-eminent symbol of Mexico. Moreover, Catrina personages, images, effigies, etc. have made increasingly bigger incursions – both in Mexico and the United States – into new areas of experience. Catrina, which began as a print of a skull in a large hat, is now present in all artistic mediums. Her image is emblazoned on all manner of commercial products. She is commonly found on Day of the Dead altars. Catrina has become the focus of civic monuments and spectacles. She sometimes even serves as a central element of permanent decor, in commercial establishments as well as the home. This article, my sixth in an annual Glasstire series devoted to all-things-related-to-Catrina, focuses on Catrinas in San Antonio, Texas.

The photographs (above and below) of the Goodwill Fashion Show at Muertos Fest, the 11th annual incarnation of this celebration, feature the elaborate lighting effects one might expect at a big rock concert. 

The fashion show was presided over by the irrepressible Michael Quintanilla (he of the high feathered hat and skeletal body suit), who had the same master of ceremonies role at the Catrina procession and contest at The Pearl, which is treated below.

Day of the Dead – and Catrina in particular – have become highly commercial in Mexico and the U.S. Roll-outs of commercial products quickly follow larger cultural developments. Newly available in 2023, the fashion show tableau illustrated above features resin Catrinas, complete with optional spotlights (not illustrated here). The scrolls on the sides of the central title scroll translate as “new” and “elegant.”

Billed by the Lemax corporation as a continuation of its Halloween Spooky Town line of products, the advertising copy refers to it as a “Catarinas [sic] Fashion Show.” Its commentary is more appropriate for Halloween: “contestants dress up in their frighteningly finest to show off for a crowd that votes on the most deadly chic of them all.” This pitch is not surprising, since this fashion show is a byproduct of the corporation’s line of Halloween merchandise.

It should be noted that Catrina is a secular character, created in the 20th century as part of an urban tradition of Day of the Dead. There are no myths, no published or folkloric biographies, and no oral traditions that define her or provide a contextual narrative. She is a creation of the visual arts, and she operates primarily on a visual level in two countries (Mexico and the U.S.) in which Day of the Dead is merging with Halloween.

In the above photograph, a Catrina float is emerging from under a bridge on San Antonio’s River Walk during the inaugural Day of the Dead River Parade in 2019. It was described as “the marquee event for the city’s Day of the Dead celebrations,”  with 22 illuminated barges decorated with Day of the Dead motifs (“Day of the Dead: WATCH 2019 Catrinas on the River Parade,” KSAT 12 video, Nov. 1, 2019, running time just under three hours).

The information provided in this video, particularly on the origins of Day of the Dead, is not accurate. For a historical context, I recommend my 2019 Glasstire article “Is Day of the Dead More Indigenous or Catholic? Friars Durán and Sahagún vs. Wikipedia,” and my 2019 catalog The Day of the Dead in Art.

As cities and municipalities compete for Day of the Dead tourists (and, of course, their money), attention-getting and press-grabbing spectacles have evolved into competitions for bragging rights, some of them certified by the Guinness World Records organization. As Mexico News Daily noted in 2016, the “passion for beating Guinness records” has become “another Mexican tradition.” Not every locale has a river in which to hold a river parade, but any town with an empty square – or even some unused beach-front property – and a measuring device can vie to create the largest Catrina statue.

As fate would have it, a new, giant Catrina statue, standing 38.5 feet tall, was unveiled this October in Maverick Plaza at La Villita, an old neighborhood in San Antonio that is currently home to many galleries. The statue is the creation of two brothers, the Mexican artists Jesús and Amauri Sanabria. The statue is billed by the City of San Antonio (falsely, as it turns out) as the second largest Catrina statue in the world. 

Some aficionados of Halloween and Day of the Dead utilize their favorite seasonal decor all year long in their homes, such that, in effect, their favorite holiday never ends. Catrina-themed cafes are not new, but a very enterprising Casa Catrina opened this summer in San Antonio. It billed itself on Instagram as “A Mystical Mexican Restaurant and Cantina Over looking the beautiful San Antonio River Walk!” There are, literally, Catrina statues and paintings at every turn in this restaurant. The photo with the mirror reproduced above is just inside the entrance.

The material above is meant as an introduction to Catrina-themed phenomena. I will return to the giant Catrina statue, the River Parade, and Casa Catrina below, as well as other manifestations of Catrina in San Antonio.

What are Catrina’s Origins?

Catrina is the child of two of Mexico’s most famous artists. José Guadalupe Posada (1852 – 1913) created the first image of this personage in the form of a small, modest print of a grinning skull with a huge hat. Its first known publication date is 1913, after the artist’s death, in the broadside (a large newsprint sheet with a satiric text) reproduced above. The Vanegas Arroyo family published at least four broadsides that recycled the Catrina image. These ephemeral publications utilized different titles, texts, and subsidiary images, and none of them served to provide even a lasting name for the image, much less to fix its overall significance. In 1930, the Catrina image was reproduced in a catalog with the title Calavera Catrina, which is how she got her name (which means female dandy). 

In 1946-47, Diego Rivera compressed 400 years of Mexican history into a 50-foot long mural called Dream of a Sunday afternoon in the Central Alameda. Catrina is at the center of that mural, between Rivera (depicted as a child, with Frida Kahlo behind him) and Posada. Through the use of symbols, Rivera indigenizes Catrina, transforming her from someone who emulated European dress into a nationalist emblem. For a detailed treatment of Catrina’s origins and subsequent transformations, see my 2019 Glasstire article “José Guadalupe Posada and Diego Rivera Fashion Catrina: From Sellout To National Icon (and Back Again?).” 

For ease of reference, my other four Catrina articles are linked here: Catrina 2; Catrina 3; Catrina 4; Catrina 5. 

San Antonio’s Spectaculars

I refer to the River Parade and to the monumental Catrina as San Antonio’s Spectaculars. 

As more and more U.S. cities jump on the Day of the Dead bandwagon, the competition for tourism is stiff. In the face of this heat, San Antonio has certainly answered the siren call of the ca-chinging cash register with a couple of big, flashy attractions.

Here, even the River Walk itself is tricked-out with corporate logos, like a NASCAR racer’s driving suit, a veritable horror vacui of sponsors and “Visit San Antonio” self-promotion. Nonetheless, one must give kudos to the city for the superb lighting effects. It’s a highly distinctive event.

In the hard light of day, the monumental Catrina doesn’t possess the greatest finish. The surface is not regular and sleek, and the clusters of flowers do not attach very well to the skulls, which are rather rudimentary.

As is evident in these two details, the statue’s “skin” does not cover the framework in a smooth manner, resulting in some awkward angularity. But these are small faults, and it is at night when this statue truly shines.

Just when I muttered under my breath that it would be wonderful to have a human subject in front of the statue to provide a sense of scale (because not even Victor Wembanyama is 35 feet tall), a woman in an orange vinyl mini-skirt, black go-go boots, and a real, carved Jack-’o-lantern for a head appeared, as if by magic. I inquired about her head. She said it was not her actual head, a point she quickly proved by removing the pumpkin. Thus she was not a victim of some spell or enchantment. I asked her why she was wearing the Jack-’o-lantern. She replied: “I decided to go full pumpkin this year.” Though it was only October 17th, she was already prepping for Halloween. I admire people that are so devoted to their costumes that they subject them to test runs. 

In these two pictures, one can appreciate the range of the lighting effects.

Returning to the question of relative size, this Catrina is not the second largest in the world. The local press cited the 74-foot- (22.67-meter) tall Catrina statue in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico as the tallest Catrina statue. However, as I noted in my Catrina 5 article, that statue is merely the one certified by Guinness World Records (which requires a lengthy application and verification process and a substantial fee). The Veracruz municipality of Misantla has been installing a 29-meter-high Catrina statue since 2018, but it cannot afford the Guinness fee and it has not sought Guinness certification.

In my Catrina 2 article, I noted the Guinness-certified Catrina statue in Zapotlanejo, Jalisco, which was 61 feet and 7.17 inches (18.77 meters) high in 2015. I reproduced a photo from 2016, when the statue had grown to 20 meters. In 2017, it reached 30 meters. There is no telling how big a statue from previous years will be this year, or if an upstart will spring from nowhere and out-measure all pretenders to the title. Additionally, if a city in Mexico erected a Catrina a little taller than San Antonio’s, it wouldn’t be particularly newsworthy. Thus it is not an easy matter to determine exactly where San Antonio ranks among the world’s tallest Catrina statues, but it is definitely not the runner-up.

I also noted in Catrina 2 that in 2019, a 37 feet high (by some reports only 36 feet) Catrina was erected in McAllen, Texas. By raising a statue that is only 38.5 feet high, San Antonio is playing a dangerous game, trying to inch out the competition. If I were McAllen, I’d add a meter or more to my statue, and reclaim the U.S. crown from what would then be a very short-lived usurper (San Antonio). Also, now that New York City has embraced Catrina mania (the subject of a future article), will the Big Apple be content to allow a couple of Texas towns to out-skyscraper it? Stay tuned! As this article goes to press, I haven’t seen reports of a taller Catrina statue in the U.S., but I suspect such a development is inevitable. 

Other Catrinas

When I was at La Villita on the 17th, I also saw a girl who was already made up for Day of the Dead. Skeletal facepaint is a very recent development in connection with Day of the Dead, even in Mexico, but it has now become very popular in both the U.S. and Mexico.

As noted previously, Casa Catrina is so jam-packed with catrinas and catrínes (the male form) that one cannot down a spirit or slip away to the bathroom without being subject to their dead eyes. A pair of Catrinas that inhabit the staircase landing are illustrated above. They face a number of painted versions.

Even a balcony bench features an amorous couple.

One can now also dine in a complete Catrina atmosphere at home. The above picture was taken at Los Pueblitos in Market Square, where one can purchase all manner of mugs, plates, serving platters and spoons, storage jars, sugar containers, etc. When you have finished licking your plate, Catrina will be staring back at you, face-to-face. Perhaps you are not watching those calories, but Catrina surely is!

Hemisfair Park

We return now to Hemisfair Park, site of the 1968 World Fair, where the fashion show illustrated above took place. The Catrina illustrated above was the largest I saw last year in San Antonio. 

Life imitates art. Rivera made his Catrina full-length, and he dressed her in a simple Tehuana dress, like those worn by Frida Kahlo. His example led the Linares family of Mexico City to create numerous, three-dimensional, Rivera-like Catrinas out of papier-mâché (see Catrina 2).

These, in turn, engendered slim ceramic Catrinas with skin-tight gowns (like those pictured above). These ceramic figures influenced the look of a character in the film The Book of Life (2014, Dir. Jorge R. Gutierrez), which wore a red dress trimmed with marigold flowers and a large red hat with candles and small ornamental skulls. The statue and the woman pictured above drew very direct inspiration from the red-garbed figure in The Book of Life. (So, too, does a woman whose picture I reproduced multiple times in Catrina 2.) 

Groups, and the public in general, are afforded the opportunity to honor the departed at a procession held at Hemisfair. Groups are often led by a Catrina and a Catrín that bear a banner. The one pictured above honors Pedro Rodríguez, who co-founded the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (and who also served as its director on multiple occasions).

There are always, however, many more Catrinas than banners.

Among the notable art objects at Hemisfair were a pair of Catrinas, made by the light-sculpture artist Charles Harrison Pompa. (That’s me in the middle.)

The Pearl

Our next stop is The Pearl, a former brewery in San Antonio. We begin with a pair of life-size Catrina statues by Regina Moya. 

The Pearl also had a procession, which, like the one at Hemisfair, was accompanied by the percussion group Son Olvidados (who wore red helmets) and the performance group Las Monas (the latter featured several costumed Catrinas and large puppets). The above photo is from the very beginning of the procession, with a Catrina in the center. 

A Catrina, lower right, waves her umbrella, with two large puppets in the background. 

Backstage, before the Catrina contest began, I noticed a contestant who had fashioned her hat out of an umbrella. Since I often describe Catrina’s hat as umbrella-like, this contestant instantly became my favorite. 

She won! She is pictured above with the first runner-up.

I subsequently photographed a Catrina at the main altar at the Hotel Emma, which is housed in the main building of the former brewery. 

An Unusual Altar at a Blue Star Upstairs Gallery

We venture now to Blue Star, where Raúl Servín has made unusual use of the Catrina figure in a painting called Welcome to Mictlán (2023). 

Mictlán is the Aztec word for the underworld, the final resting place for most of the deceased (men who died in war and women who died in childbirth went to a paradise instead). Servín’s painting is a tribute to recently deceased artist friends, most of whom were from San Antonio. 

The painting is set in front of the facade of the Alamo church. Indigenous dancers and drummers are performing in the foreground. An apparition of the Virgin of Guadalupe fills the arch of the main doorway. Ramón Vasquez y Sanchez, a very close friend of Servín’s who died in 2023, steps out of the Alamo church, dressed in indigenous garb. Vasquez y Sanchez was an elder of the Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation, and he co-founded the AIT-SCM (American Indians in Texas at the Spanish Colonial Missions). 

Vasquez y Sanchez curated numerous exhibitions, including the first Day of the Dead exhibition in San Antonio at the Centro Aztlán in 1977, an organization he also co-founded. (See my The Day of the Dead in Art, p. 52.)

Vasquez y Sanchez and Servín often participated in multiple Day of the Dead exhibitions each year. As a Coahuiltecan, Vasquez y Sanchez was deeply connected to the Spanish Missions in San Antonio (which include the Alamo), and he was also, in some respects, at least, a Catholic. In 1986, he even played the part of Christ in La Pasión de Cristo (The Passion of Jesus Christ), a theatrical procession that included reenactments of Christ’s trial, trip to Calvary, and crucifixion. 

Deborah Keller-Rihn, a close friend of the artist, asked Vasquez y Sanchez how he could be both an indigenous leader deeply invested in indigenous spiritual practices, and a Catholic, given the church’s colonial history and its sometime hostility to indigenous religions (local church officials have permitted indigenous rituals at some of the local missions). Vasquez y Sanchez replied to her: “When I enter the church, I take off my head,” and he gestured as if he were taking off a hat. By this action, Vasquez y Sanchez expressed his deep emotional connection to the church and some of its symbolism, while, at the same time, intellectually, he rejected many of its doctrines, as well as the church hierarchy. 

As we can see in the above detail, Servín emphasizes that Vasquez y Sanchez is both indigenous (through his clothing) and Catholic (his right hand is actually grasping the Virgin of Guadalupe’s right hand!). At the same time, a Catrina figure, who is striding forward with Vasquez y Sanchez, grasps his left arm. (Her slit skirt that provides a view of her leg bones derives from ceramic depictions of Catrina.) Clearly inspired by Rivera’s fresco, in which Catrina is grasped by both Rivera and Posada, Servín gives center stage to Vasquez y Sanchez. Catrina here seems to function like a spiritual and cultural avatar, adding yet another layer of meaning to indigenous and Catholic belief systems. As the personification of the Day of the Dead, she escorts Vasquez y Sanchez to his final destination. Servín creates an innovative narrative function for Catrina, thus extending her role beyond an image with no story. For another work that enlarges Catrina’s function, see Catrina 5, where artist Brandon Maldonado turns Catrina into a death saint on an altar who mourns the victims of school shootings in the U.S. 

With this parting shot of the fashion show, I bid the reader goodbye until next year. I’m off to Mexico, and, with any luck, I will photograph a few Catrinas.