The “well to die” in the Yucatan of the 18th century: the more money, the more privileges

MÉRIDA.- In the 18th century, Dying was something very common in Yucatánmainly among children. In addition, the church governed everything related to “dying well” and clothing, “singing” or prayer depended on the social group to which one belonged and the money one had.

The blame was distributed among the mourners in a unhygienic drink and the dead were buried with money, “for anything.” The closer you are to the altar, the greater the possibility of salvation. These and other data were shared by historian Wilberth Gabriel Sánchez Moo, author of works on the subject.

“Dying in the 18th century “It was truly something every day,” he says. And before the development of medicine and vaccines, it was common for a flu or a disease that is very easy to treat today to cause people to die. It is estimated, at a demographic level, that 50% of those born died before turning five years old, he details.

“Before, the death of infants was not given the same value or importance. The more children you had, the more workforce there was,” says the researcher, who is currently pursuing a postgraduate degree in the Center for Historical Studies of the College of Michoacán.

Children deceased in Yucatán

“It was very common for them to be born and die, so it lent itself to clandestine burials on farms, towns and roads. They threw them away. Bodies could be found at the entrances to churches and so on. There was no control as such over the death of children, because it was not as complicated to get rid of those bodies, as it was for adults,” explains the interviewee.

And not everyone could pay funeral costs. At that time there was a kind of price tabulator and services offered by the church, “because before, only it completely regulated this matter of good to die“The intervention of the State to document these events occurred in the second half of the 19th century, when the Civil Registrationdetails the specialist.

Prices varied depending on the social group to which one belonged. “Before, it was very important if you were white, Spanish or mestizo… There were different prices for people of African descent and also for the poor classes, who were buried by the mercy of the church, through a process called ‘for nothing’, which were free burialss”.

Burials in the 18th century in Yucatán

Another important point was the place: legitimate burials were made in religious spaces, both inside the church and in its atriums. “The closer you were to the altar, the more likely it was that you would enter heaven,” explains the UADY graduate, who remembers that in churches in the downtown Merida Tombstones of people who were buried there at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century can still be seen in the ground.

“If you had money to pay, you could have the priest dress in a certain way, accompany you in the procession from your house to the church and choose where the burial would be, with many people singing to you.

“You could pay for a better coffin, better clothing, and your shroud could be different. So, depending on what you could pay“It was the service that you could have,” says the author of the work. “Dying in the parish…“, about the 18th century funeral customs in Yucatan.

People’s wishes could also be recorded in wills, where they could even record the clothing they wanted to wear. For example, a habit like that of Saint Francis.

“Shameful poor” in colonial times

For those who could not pay, even the “shameful poor” Spaniards (“it was a shame to be white and to be poor”) were buried for free in a kind of common grave.

Las indigenous people, As it was regulated since the 16th century, they were the ones who had to support the religious entity that evangelized them. “So, the religious man had to compensate the indigenous person by not charging for those (funerary) services. That was what was required, as stipulated by the Diocese of Yucatán. But clearly the religious man could also demand payment, which was customary.”

In that case, since it was not so easy to have money, they paid with “earth genus“, that is, in kind: chickens, honey, bushels of corn, etc. In the case of Spaniards and mestizos, they paid in silver pesos.

“Let’s say that a very high price was 15 pesos, which included that the father be dressed in a sumptuous way, that there be people carrying out a singing procession, that the mass be sung and not prayed. And it went down according to the ethnic quality.

“The burial of white people cost fifteen pesos because they could pay for it. It cost ten pesos for black people, because it is understood that they had less, and so on. Until they reach the poor or the unknown, who already had free burials.”

Who had the right to burial?

The specialist recalled that it was at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century that for medical and hygienist reasons, cemeteries began to be made next to the churches, which later became cemeteries.

Furthermore, not everyone had the right to be buried in churches. Those who died from capital punishment and those who committed suicide were denied being there. Their bodies were left in clandestine cemeteries, located outside the towns.

Guilts of the deceased, distributed in a drink

On the other hand there are the customs that the priests considered superstitious. For example, the blame sharing: “With the water that was washed from the deceased, at the end drinks were prepared and distributed among those who attended the funeral to distribute the guilt of the deceased equally among those attending so that he could transcend to heaven and the sins would remain here… Currently they no longer drink the water of the deceased, but rather they distribute his belongings to distribute his guilt.”

@diariodeyucatan Do you know what “blame sharing” is? An ancient Mayan belief that would have given rise to black filling in #Yucatan #traditions #gastronomy #yucatecangastronomy ♬ original sound – Diario de Yucatán

Another custom is that they were buried with money, “so that you can, if necessary, pay at some point to get to heaven. They were also buried with corn, with tortillas, with things, with machetes and so on, because it is assumed that they will also continue working the cornfield after death.”

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The researcher also pointed out that since the 18th century there have already been mentions of the ritual of veneration or honor towards the deceased, mentioning that smaller huts were placed inside the huts with fruit and food for the deceased, “which would be what later evolved and overlapped folklorically with what we know today as Hanal Pixán.”

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