An altar for Mexico's Day of the Dead celebration is not something one would expect to see at the Irish ambassador's residence in Abu Dhabi. But this is the third year that Mexican and Irish ambassadors have brought their communities and traditions together to celebrate an unlikely bond for Halloween, in costume.
On Thursday night, the aromas of tacos from well-loved restaurant La Patrona and shepherd's pie blended with merengue music and Irish tunes in an unexpected cultural connection.
Ireland's ambassador to the UAE, Alison Milton, is behind the joint celebration between the two embassies, where the Gaelic origins of Halloween, Samhain and Day of the Dead are both celebrated. The event was inspired by her trip to Latin America, two years after her dad's passing when she was only 21.
“In Ireland, death is a funny thing. We pay homage to the passing. After the person goes into the grave, it nearly becomes haram to talk about the person, which is a really, really difficult thing if you're a bereaved person,” Milton tells The National. “I found it very hard when I was bereaved that I wasn't really meant to talk about my dad any more.”
The differences she saw between Ireland and Mexico's treatment of the departed made an impact on her. She found comfort in the traditions of the Mexican Day of the Dead.
“I went to Mexico early in my time and saw people celebrating the dead in the graveyard, and I said, 'that is what we need to be doing',” she said.
Day of the Dead is celebrated in Mexico on November 1 and 2, and altars, like the one at the event, which took seven hours to construct, are made for those who have passed.
“From childhood, we celebrate Day of the Dead with a lot of joy and the calaveras, the small skulls, normally are candies that you can eat and people get the coffin and play with the dead, so we are very familiar with death in a very happy way,” says Mexican ambassador Louis Alfonso de Alba.
“You bring the food your loved ones used to like, and the drinks and music. So it's a way of being together again even if they are not alive any more. And this is very difficult to understand in several cultures.”
The Mexican holiday traditions bear a resemblance to the Gaelic festival Samhain, celebrated on October 31, which honours loved ones who have passed. Both cultures use the time of year to conduct rituals of remembrance, with Samhain swapping candles at the altar for bonfires.
The event breaks from the formality of typical diplomatic events, with attendees dressing as witches, skeletons and the La Catrina skeleton. Milton showed off an elaborate Day of the Dead outfit, complete with a flower crown and make-up, while de Alba joked that his costume, a plain guayabera shirt and a hat, would be better next year.
Although the countries' views on death are distinct, the ambassadors insist that they are more united than divided. This goes as far back as the 1840s, when a group of Irish soldiers called Saint Patrick's Battalion switched sides and fought for Mexico after Texas was annexed by the United States.
“Ireland fought in favour of Mexicans during the revolution, and there are many other opportunities on which we have been working together and particularly on foreign policy. We are very close,” de Alba says. “We have common approaches on a number of issues from disarmament to the rights of persons with disabilities.”
This event is unique to Abu Dhabi, which is home to about 3,000 Mexicans and 14,000 Irish citizens, with both communities growing in the UAE.
“Abu Dhabi provides us with a beautiful space to do this, we have so many different nationalities here,” says Milton. “I don't know if this even would work in Mexico or in Ireland necessarily. It works here because we're in the middle of the world with our two continents quite far apart. Abu Dhabi is a point of connection and us connecting here is really appropriate, I think.”
Both ambassadors hope the tradition will live beyond their appointments in Abu Dhabi, and hope to expand it in future years.
“I think it's the best of both of us, of what we offer as countries, our people, our spirit, our remembrance of those who were gone before, and our cultural heritage,” Milton concludes. “It's part of who we are.”
