Calavera poems joke in face of death

After decades spent looking through headstones in the city cemetery and combing through death certificates, Yolanda Gonzalez-Gomez says it's easy to look death in the face and laugh.

"They call me ‘la dama de las fantasmas,'" Gonzalez-Gomez said. "I'm the ghost lady."

On Saturday, Gonzalez-Gomez shared her knowledge of Day of the Dead traditions at the Old City Cemetery Center during a Calavera Poetry Workshop.

A Brownsville Historic Association board member and the longtime director of the University of Texas and Texas Southmost College John H. Hunter Archives and Special Collections Room, Gonzalez-Gomez says her lifelong project of mapping the family trees of Brownsville residents has made her feel close to the dead.

"When I do a family tree, I feel like I'm living the time they lived in," Gonzalez-Gomez said. "I know how they dressed, the foods they ate, I care about those people."

Gonzalez-Gomez said she's excited by the rejuvenated interest in Day of the Dead customs in the area, but that some lesser-known traditions from the holiday, such as calavera poetry, are still unfamiliar to most of the city's residents.

A calavera is a skull, used symbolically during the annual celebration to stand in for the dead. During the holiday, calaveras are often made of sugar and decorated or used in artwork.

Calavera poems, she explained, use a detail of a living person's life to mock that person and say how this defect will lead to their demise. Though the poems tend to rhyme, the structure is loose.

Gonzalez-Gomez says that in some respects the Day of the Dead lasts all year in Mexico.

"We are always looking death in the face, taunting it," she said. "We move toward it with bravery."