Candlelight, Mezcal, and a Town That Danced Until Sunrise
If I had to choose just one day from the entire trip to relive, it would be this one.
The morning was slow — roasted chicken and roasted potatoes for brunch, genuinely delicious, picked up while walking through the local market in Tlacolula. This wasn't a market built for visitors; it was just the town going about its morning, street vendors, everyday business, nothing staged for anyone passing through. The whole pace felt unhurried, though I couldn't tell if that was the town recovering from the night before, or quietly gathering itself for the two biggest days of the year still ahead. I stopped at a small mezcal distillery, watched the process up close, and tasted something sharper and more complex than anything I'd had before.
Everything shifted after dark. Outside the cemeteries near Barrio de Jalatlaco, a full street food market had taken over, vendors and crowds filling the area before I'd even stepped inside. Once I did, a family near the entrance offered me a small cup of mezcal almost immediately — a warm, easy welcome into the night. Walking further in, a violinist was playing live, people singing along, music drifting from speakers somewhere else entirely, layering over each other in a way that somehow worked. I wouldn't call the mood quiet reverence, exactly — in places it was lively, even a little crowded and noisy, full of conversation and movement. Some of the grave decorations were genuinely impressive, clearly built with real creativity and care.
On my way back toward the entrance, I found myself drawn to one particularly large family grave — the size of the group gathered there, and the easy harmony between them, pulled me in before I'd even decided to stop. They invited me to sit, and I spent a while with them sharing laughs and more mezcal. I didn't want to leave.
Later that night, I drove up to San Agustín Etla for La Muerteada, and the entire mood flipped into something else again — pure, loud celebration. Dancers in handmade costumes covered in small silver bells jumped and spun through the plaza, the whole town moving with them, fireworks lighting the hillside overhead. Among the costumes, the devil figures stood out the most — elaborate, a little frightening, central to the whole event: La Muerteada reenacts a battle between good and evil, and those devil costumes are the beating heart of that story, not just decoration. Eventually the crowd began moving as one, parading through narrow alleys to perform the dance ritual in front of specific homes along the way, stopping and starting as the procession wound deeper into town. I stayed until about one in the morning, and even then, nothing showed signs of slowing down.
I keep coming back to this day in my memory — the quiet market in the morning, strangers sharing mezcal and laughter in a cemetery lit by candlelight, and a town dancing with devils until sunrise. If there's one day from this whole trip I'd tell you not to miss, it's this one.