Day of the Dead verses

Literary calaveras

Literary calaveras are rhyming verses written for the Day of the Dead imagining the death of someone still alive. With humor and mischief, they portray the person's flaws and "bury" them in jest.

They emerged in the 19th-century press and became popular in the broadsides printed by workshops such as Antonio Vanegas Arroyo's. Each sheet combined a large engraving, usually by José Guadalupe Posada or Manuel Manilla, with columns of verses dedicated to trades, politicians, artists and neighbors.

Today literary calaveras are written in schools, newspapers and social media, but their form remains the same: quatrains or décimas, easy rhyme and criticism wrapped in laughter.

The MUNAG holds original calavera broadsides such as "Calaveras de ocasión que están fuera del montón" and "El purgatorio artístico". You can read them in their records.