'Life and Death - Mexican Rhapsody Praying' seems to be the last of thoughts in Mexico, where mourning is exhibited with sounds, costumes, music, dances, colors but also with disturbing masks and presences as if to make fear and restlessness familiar and friendly. On the day of the Dead, cemeteries are an explosion of life. Sacred and profane, just as life and death touch each other, until they coincide. In pre-Columbian civilizations the idea of death was connected to the concept of rebirth, an alternation that guaranteed the cosmic order and therefore a fundamental and necessary passage. The Spaniards and the Church resolved the issue by relegating it to the "pagan rites" category. To hide, or worse. But tradition is stronger than anything and wants that, in the Dìa de los muertos - in fact, the events go from October 31 to November 2 -, the deceased return from the underworld to embrace friends and relatives.

So why be sad? The cemeteries become meeting places, decorated, full of food and drinks, so that the dear extinct who returns, can refresh and feel at home. There are those who light candles (there is a point of light everywhere), those who spend the whole night on the tombs, eating, talking, playing, dressing up, parading in processions with carnival masks. Exorcising death with fun and joy is a constant in pre-Columbian cultures, but not only. After all, it is said so: to die laughing. It is not a symptom of lightness, but the proof that man laughs to ward off death. Death, not the dead. Which are closer than ever.

As the poet Paul Claudel wrote: «Death does not exist ... I just went to the next house what I have been for you I always will be. Call me as you always called me Talk to me like you've always done Don't use a different tone, do not look solemn or sad Keep laughing at it we laughed together ... Life remains what it has always been The thread is not cut Why would I be away from you? Maybe because you don't see me anymore? No, I'm not far. I am just across the street.» 
- Luca Cardinalini, RAI journalist