Getting Flinntimate with the local Guays.: The Day of Souls

Souls Day:

Halloween is not really a thing in Paraguay. The candy companies are trying to make it happen by sending down themed candy and promoting trick or treating but let me tell you right now nestle… it’s a lost cause. Paraguayans (keep in mind I am speaking for the people in my community) do call October 31 witches day. What this means is that throughout the day they playfully insult one another by saying congratulations and happy witch day. I did my best to explain the candy and trick or treating but it never really made sense to them.

One thing I did notice from Paraguay (although I am writing this from the comfort of my bedroom in my parent’s home in Powder Springs, more on that in later blogs), is that people in America seem to be into the “Día de Muertos” or day of the dead. Although this day falls on Halloween it is more about honoring the dead than begging strangers for candy and seeing if you can still pull off the slutty cop look.

Paraguay’s version of day of the dead falls on November 2. The name my host mom gave me is “The day of souls” but I have heard there are other common names. This year it happened to fall on a Saturday and I was invited to join the family at the cemetery. The man who would have been my host father, Na Julia’s husband for 50 plus years, died 1 year before I arrived in the community and the family was heading to the cemetery to pay their respects.

Na Julia, Lourdes, Solidad (my host cousin, she’s 21), and I all piled into a taxi and drove the 6 miles to the cemetery. Once we got there we walked past all of the grave sites to the final resting place of Na Julia’s husband. We spent the next half hour cleaning the grave and rearranging flowers. A candle was lit and we said a prayer. Next we moved to the grave of Na Julia’s son, he died 11 years ago. He was around 40 when he passed away from what I believe was a brain aneurism. I am not positive because my host mother just told me he dropped dead in front of the house one day and no one knows why. It is not uncommon for people to be unsure about a person’s cause of death, especially if it happened years ago. Tests and autopsies are expensive and often a spiritual or cultural justification is given. Once we finished cleaning his grave and changing the flowers we just hung out.

We stayed at the graves for around 3 hours, and really the idea was just to spend time with them. To me it seemed like a really nice tradition. There were a lot of Paraguayans all visiting loved ones and some brought soda and snacks. They spent the day greeting each other and spending time at the graves of loved ones that they had lost.

After we spent time with the graves of the immediate family members we went to find Na Julia’s father’s grave. He died around 50 years of tuberculosis. His grave was interesting because his brother had been buried on top of him around 10 years after he was buried. We visited with other family members that happened to be at the cemetery, and then we returned to the original graves to say goodbye one last time.

In my opinion this is a much better holiday than Halloween. Paraguayans spend the day remembering loved ones. Oddly, it is not a day full of tears. It is a day where you sit around the graves of loved ones and have conversations as you normally would. It is as if you are filling them in on what they have missed in the past year and to me that is far more special than dressing like a half-naked Miley Cyrus on a wrecking ball.