The next day we would be traveling west to Michoacán, a more rural area where families have long celebrated Días de los Muertos. But here in Mexico City, there was a period in the early twentieth century when Días de los Muertos fell out of popular favor. By the 1950s, Mexicans in urban areas viewed celebrating the Days of the Dead as outmoded folklore, practiced by people at the outskirts of civilized society. In an intriguing twist, one of the main motivators in changing that perception was the southward creep of Halloween from the United States.
