麻豆传媒映画

The San Diego Padres will don their new City Connect uniforms for the third time this season on May 1, a home game against the Chicago White Sox. Unveiled April 10, the jerseys, caps and other items incorporate images, colors and themes from a variety of Mexican traditions, including D铆a de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. Fan reaction has been positive, with merchandise flying out of the team store.

In an interview with NewsCenter, 麻豆传媒映画鈥檚 Ramona Perez 鈥� a professor of anthropology, directora of the 麻豆传媒映画 Center for Latin American Studies and Chair of the Aztec Identity Initiative 鈥� explored the rich history behind the City Connect themes and their links to precolonial Aztec and Mexican culture.

Perez discusses the origins of La Catrina, the skeletal figure that is said to be the first female representation on an MLB uniform, the origins of the use of marigolds and papel picado, what it means for the broader, binational community -- and how it all fits in with the team name and its own history.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

The Padres are wearing new City Connect uniforms drawn heavily from the culture of Mexico. Before we get into the specifics, how well do you think they've pulled it off?

I think that they have captured the way in which the Day of the Dead has become a part of popular culture, both in Mexico and among Mexican descendants in the U.S. They've taken some of the key symbols that are now a part of Day of the Dead and put them forward. It's very much a popular culture expression.

The image of La Catrina from Dia de los Muertos is on their shoulder patches and even the sides of the bases on the ballfield, along with tons of merchandise. What should people know about La Catrina, and do you think the team's use of her is appropriate?

I think it's fine. La Catrina has really come to be the popular representation of what has a really deep, deep, deep history. The celebration of our ancestors, of the deceased, is definitely thousands of years old. It is definitely a part of Mexica or Aztec culture, as well as many of the indigenous cultures of Mesoamerica. So that is not new.

The Catrina itself is supposed to capture Mict膿cacihu膩tl, which is the female deity of the dead for the Aztec people. But it comes out of social satire. The original depictions were part of almost like newsprint that Jos茅 Guadalupe Posada put together sometime between 1910 and 1913, he used them quite a bit in resistance to Porfirio Diaz, who became president and then eventually a dictator in Mexico and was known for compromising Mexico's autonomy by allowing the U.S. and European entities to buy into the Mexican state. 

Her original name was La Calavera Garbancera. And what it was representing was garbanzo bean vendors, who at the time were primarily Indigenous women, and they would powder their faces white. Benito Juarez did the same thing. He was a Zapotec, president of Mexico, and he also used that white rice powder to soften the darkness of his skin. So many of these vendors started doing that, and then they started appropriating European dress instead of their traditional dress in the marketplace. That's the first imagery of it.

What happened later to make her so widely recognized?

It became really popular and famous when Diego Rivera created this 50-foot long mural and the Catrina was in the middle. It was called 鈥淒ream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park.鈥� It is the history of Mexico from pre-contact all the way through to the 20th century, and the Catrina is right in the middle. For him, it was the transition from Indigenous Mexico to Mestizo Mexico. So she represents in many ways the fusion of Mestizaje in Mexico. It's a kind of mocking of wealth in many ways as well, because you can't take wealth with you into the grave.

I have this idea that eventually we're going to see fans at City Connect games in cosplay as Catrina. Are there any rules to follow?

You know, there are no rules to follow. I mean, when you look at her, she has some of the key symbols on her, right? First of all, it's the defiance of death. Because in pre-contact culture, in Aztec culture, as well as in many Indigenous cultures, our life right now is only one world. 

There are actually around 13 upper worlds, and there are nine underworlds. And the underworld is not a negative. They're just multiple worlds, and we're right here in the middle. The deities are up here in the 13 upper worlds. And so when we die, we have to go through a journey down to Mictlan. And Mictlan is the ninth level, the ultimate level. So when we die, if we have lived a good life, then we can get all the way down. When we actually make it all the way down to Mictlan into the ninth world, a new life can be born.

There's no real parameter that you have to follow. You can interpret that Catrina in any way you want. She usually has the flowers, the cempas煤chil, marigolds, which are a very important part of medicinal healing among the Aztec people. 

And marigolds are a prominent part of the overall City Connect design. Where does that come from?

When we use them in traditional healing, they are an antiseptic, so they kill bacteria. They're an insect repellent. You can literally make a marigold, a kind of cempas煤chil, water and spray it on you for insect repellent. It's also an anesthetic, for pain relief. So it's a super important flower. 

Marigolds were also used in death because there was no embalming, and marigolds have that very strong scent, so it's also covering the smell of death. Along with the candles.

In terms of its representation, I noticed that the Padres on their website also talked about colors. And so there are four colors that they are using on these uniforms: black, dark purple, orange, and yellow. And so the cempas煤chil, the marigolds, represent the orange and yellow. The orange and yellow represents daylight, life. Black and purple represent the night. So it's always kind of like this duality that you are dealing with. 

So you've got these two things that are part of moving from life into death. Which is why you use them now in the grave, because our ancestors remember. They remember being honored with the cempas煤chil. They remember being honored with the candle. So they come back to it during that very small window, you know, the three days (of Dias de la Muerta) that the window between the worlds opens up.

And the levels of death are just as important as the levels of life.

Absolutely. Because you're not really dead. You're just no longer in this middle world that we know as Earth.

One of the other details is the papel picado (perforated paper) styling on the uniform jock tags, and I have read that it has Aztec roots. Is that true?

It has Otomi roots, which is prior to the Aztecs. The Otomi people were actually the ones who created what's called amate. Amate is the bark of the wild fig or nettle or mulberry trees. And they boil down the bark until it makes a pulp, and then they lay it out and they create paper. The Otomi would carve into it.

They eventually started carving it not just as communication, but in rituals. So they make dolls out of it, they make all kinds of things from it. Then when the Aztecs and the Maya as well began to use it, they used it for official documents.

When the Spanish came, they were the ones who introduced tissue paper. Tissue paper would be stacked up, and they would use metal punches that had designs and punch it through to make the papel picado.

The Aztec Empire, and the many other Indigenous city-states, encompassed many groups with different languages. To communicate across  multiple languages and territorial spaces  they had to come up with a communication system that was highly symbolic. And so the symbols that get punched into papel picado tell you what's being celebrated, and it can cross over and defy language barriers.

The for the new uniforms showed a Dia de los Muertos ofrenda with candles and photographs of departed Padres figures including Tony Gwynn, Jerry Coleman and Peter Seidler. It was on display at Petco Park for at least the first City Connect game. Are there any sensitivities associated with something like that?

Not really. The whole purpose of an altar is to create a space where our loved ones can be honored. You set up an altar with the flowers, special foods the deceased liked, and candles to light their way.. You start at the grave with your decorations to honor the deceased, and then you bring those into your home so that they come home for a little while and re-bless your house. Each family will do it according to what each person on the altar loved. 

What else comes to mind as you ponder the use of these historic, pre-colonial themes for marketing?

For me, it's convoluted, because the (Spanish) padres were a colonial imposition that harmed Indigenous people. So to appropriate Indigenous symbology as a way to promote them is conflictive. 

At the same time, we are in a moment nationally where our Hispanic community members are under threat. So for the Padres to decide they're going to honor our communities at this moment is probably one of the greatest gifts that they can give us and the larger San Diego community. They're basically affirming that they're standing alongside us. And that's super important.

I think that's why it's so popular right now, because there's such a feeling of being harmed that this is a recognition that we belong. That we are part of San Diego. I think they're also saying that they are embracing our diversity. They're embracing multiple kinds of symbolic expression. And so their uniforms and everything else are a really good way to say to our community that we're one.