Talk:Pan de muerto

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Bias in the "History" section

It says that the bread of the dead is of pre-Columbian origin. But how is it possible that it was pre-Columbian, if the wheat was imported by the Spanish? It says that pre-Hispanic indigenous people "baked bread". How are they going to bake bread, if it didn't even exist back then? The indigenist theories have been widely discredited by academics, and the legend of the heart in the amaranth, which is explained here as if it were true, is a myth that is not explained in any codex or record of that time. More serious studies such as that of Dr. Elsa Malvido (from the INAH) have shown the Hispanic and Christian origin of the pan de muerto, although this is not explained at any time in the text. – El Mono 🐒 (es.wiki account) 10:39, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Bibliography

The book Sacred foods: bread, wine and oil in the ancient Mediterranean, basic source of information for the "Origin" section, was consulted on Monday, May 26, 2022 at the Francesca Bonnemaison Library in Barcelona, Spain. You can check the availability of this and other books in the book search engine of the Libraries of the Province of Barcelona, Aladí (see Aliments sagrats: pa, vi i oli a la Mediterrània antiga ISBN 849321132X). If anyone wants to verify this information, please contact me. Thank you. – El Mono 🐒 (es.wiki account) 10:38, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Ok, but why did you also remove sourced material when you added your new content? Ibadibam (talk) 21:41, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

I've restored some of the previous content and removed some of the content you added regarding the symbolism of pan de muerto. You added this content to a passage that had cited the Boletín Científico article, but I didn't see this information mentioned in the article's abstract. If you did actually find this information in the Boletín source, please go ahead and add it again. If it was not based on this source, it needs to have a reference to the source it's actually from.

Could you provide some quotations from La fiesta de muertos? I searched the book on Google Books and couldn't find the information you attributed to it. Ibadibam (talk) 23:56, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Hello Ibadibam, thanks for your review. I will answer your questions one by one:

• I removed sourced material, specifically the paragraph that begins by saying "Pan de muerto seems to have pre-Columbian origins" because this is not true (according to the sources, I will go deeper into this topic later). On top of that, nothing was mentioned about its European origin. Also, I have removed the information about the ensaïmada since they are not related ((neither in the ingredients, nor in the preparation, nor in the form)). The only reference I have found associating pan de muerto with ensaïmada is a Washington Post article:

(...) But pan de muerto is more similar to a spiral-shaped, sugarcoated Mallorcan bread called ensaïmada.

It does not seem to me that this phrase justifies that the pan de muerto "has been linked historically" to ensaïmada. “Ensaïmada" comes from the Catalan saïm which means “lard”, therefore "lard bread". The pan de muerto does not have lard, so... what exactly is that relationship?

• About the reference of the Boletín Oficial, I did not put it so I cannot help you. Now I've seen that I moved it to another place, I must have been wrong. The symbolism of the different parts of the bread appears in numerous sources (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.), but I think that the original source is the Cuautitlán Izcalli University website (literally this image).

Before my edition, the Boletín Oficial citation referenced the following sentence:

Some scholars describe the tradition as an outgrowth of human sacrifices in which a heart was placed in amaranth, leading to the development of a heart-shaped amaranth-based baked good.

What does "Some scholars" mean? isn't that WP:WEASEL? I do not believe that this information is correct, since there is no real evidence in this association. But you can keep this information, as long as it is emphasized that it is just a theory or a myth.

• About La fiesta de muertos, I proceed to transcribe the paragraph:

El pan es uno de los alimentos siempre presentes en la ofrenda. En estas fechas se prepara el llamado pan de ofrenda o pan de muerto, introducido por los españoles, se hace con harina de trigo, azúcar, huevos, anís y levadura.

— page 47, chapter “Los significados del Altar: La comida y los dulces” La fiesta de muertos (ISBN 968 5343 02 0)

Masa enriquecida is not specifically said by the book. Masa enriquecida is an umbrella term to describe breads of this kind (whose dough includes fat, milk or eggs), like pan de muerto.

I don't think I need more references to prove that a wheat bread, flavored with orange and covered with cane sugar (all ingredients from the Old World), is of Hispanic origin, not pre-Hispanic. It is obvious that the festival itself, the Día de Muertos, is a mixture of both. But the bread as such, no. Because bread did not exist in America before 1492. When I edited the article for the first time, there was no trace of the Hispanic contribution anywhere. The Government of Mexico itself denies that it was of Hispanic origin:

Su origen es bastante discutido. Nosotros os explicaremos la que más fuerza tiene en la actualidad y la que defiende el Gobierno de México en su página web. Según el Instituto Nacional de Pueblos Indígenas (INPI) el origen de las ofrendas a los muertos tiene lugar en las culturas prehispánicas. La ofrenda homóloga en aquel entonces al pan de muerto era la de la la de la diosa Cihuapipiltin. Esta ofrenda era dedicada a todas las mujeres que morían en el primer parto. Las personas creían que rondaban por el aire causando enfermedades a los niños y por eso las honraban con estos regalos en los templos.

— informaciongastronomica.com

I would like to add, if I may, to the article the following references, which give more weight to the Hispanic theory, and discredit the pre-Hispanic theory:

El antecesor del pan de muertos es el pan de ánimas originado en Segovia. El pan de ánimas fue utilizado por los conquistadores para ofrendar a sus muertos durante el virreinato y fue asimilado por los indígenas por sus creencias prehispánicas.

— La cultura indígena en la fotografía mexicana de los 90s, pg. 292

Otra ofrenda de alimentos era el pan de ánimas como se llama en Segovia, claro antecedente del pan de muerto que se consume actualmente en México

— La celebración del Día de Muertos en el estado de Guerrero, pg. 20

(in fact, there are some parts of Mexico, like Puebla and Tlaxcala (states with strong Spanish influence), where it is still called “Pan de ánimas” 1 )

Primero habría que subrayar que esta fiesta es un precioso ejemplo de mestizaje cultural (…) Existen algunos rasgos permanentes y constantes; estos son: las ofrendas, el pan de muerto y el uso de la calavera como símbolo general de la fiesta, plasmado en diferentes formas y materiales. A México llegaría esta costumbre cristiana, con ciertas peculiaridades españolas; por ejemplo, en las provincias vascongadas se acostumbraba hacer ofrendas de trigo, pan y vino que se llevaban a la misa de difuntos, o bien se colocaban sobre las sepulturas.

— Usos y costumbres funerarias en la Nueva España, pg 127

El pan de muerto es otro componente imprescindible en las ofrendas. De origen europeo, en algunas regiones de España, el pan conocido como ánima o pan de muerto se depositaba en las tumbas. El antecedente del pan en el México… [unfortunately, I could not find the continuation of this fragment]

— pg 34. Día de muertos en Chapingo

Al llegar los españoles, se horrorizan con dicha práctica y deciden cambiar la ofrenda por algo que no involucrara sacrificios humanos. Ya traían de España la costumbre de hacer el Pan de Ánimas, el cual se preparaba en honor a los sacramentos de la Iglesia católica. El pan de muerto es al final del día, un pan con origen colonial pero inspirado en costumbres prehispánicas. Luego crean un pan redondo, con sabor a naranja y esencia de azahares.

— Prensa de Houston, 2021

Según Scheffler (1999), con la fusión de las culturas prehispánica y española, el culto a la muerte se eliminó casi por completo, pero el culto a los muertos perduró con un sincretismo bien marcado. Según esta autora, hay investigadores hispánicos que señalan que en la península Ibérica, durante el siglo XVI, se hacía una visita anual al cementerio y se colocaba pan, vino y flores en las sepulturas. En la celebración de Todos Santos, se preparaba una comida en recuerdo de los muertos. En Salamanca y León se repartía el “pan de muerto” entre los pobres y en Segovia el día de los Fieles Difuntos se les daba “pan de ánimas”.

— Conocimiento prehispánico de la muerte, La Muerte, pg. 55

Las primeras celebraciones del Día de Todas las Almas el 2 de noviembre en México se llevaron a cabo cuando las primeras reliquias llegaron de Europa a principios de la década de A partir de esa fecha, durante los próximos 300 años de la colonia española en México, las personas tomaron reliquias de pan o de pasta de azúcar para ser bendecidas el 2 de noviembre en busca de protección y bendiciones para el año. Esta costumbre preparó el escenario para la tradición actual de calaveras de azúcar y la adición de pequeños huesos hechos de masa del tradicional pan de ánimas español, ahora conocido como pan de muertos.

— Museum of International Folk Art, 2017

In the article in Spanish, I have decided to explain the pre-Hispanic theories, but emphasizing the fact that they are myths and legends. If you don't want to eliminate the indigenous theory from the article in English, let it be by explaining that they are myths. Because when I got to the article they were explained as if it were true. Thanks for reading this far. Greetings. – El Mono 🐒 (es.wiki account) 06:40, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

@Ibadibam: In this reference, which you yourself have put to reference the Mesoamerican origin of the pan de muerto, it is clearly explained that it is of Spanish origin:

To the question of European vs indigenous origins, there can be no simple resolution until more extensive colonial sources come to light. For now, evidence indicates that the Mexican Day of the Dead is a colonial invention, a unique product of colonial demographic and economic processes. The principal types and uses of food on this holiday definitely derive from Europe. After all, there is no tortilla de muertos but rather pan de muertos, just one highly significant detail. Nor did cane sugar exist in the Americas prior to the Spanish conquest. The existence of special breads and sugar based sweets, the custom of placing these and other food substances on gravesites and altars, and the practice of begging and other distributive mechanisms all derive from Spain. At the same time, the particular anthropomorphic form that Day of the Dead sweets assume is part of both Spanish and Aztec traditions. This combination of Spanish and indigenous culinary habits and tastes no doubt culminated in the ofrenda patterns we observe today. The ofrenda itself is probably Spanish, although it has long assumed significance in Mexico that far outstrips that in the mother country

— Skulls to the Living, Bread to the Dead, pg. 40

I also have a conflict with your mention of tzoalli, since tzoalli is "offering" in general, not even "dead offering". Again, the justification here is the website of the Government of Mexico, which is even more controversial. If we go to this website, in the paragraph that talks about tzoalli it says:

Fray Diego de Durán recounts in his chronicle about the offering of Huitzilopochtli, that the people in this celebration "did not eat anything other than tzoalli with honey", with said mixture based on amaranth and wasp or maguey honey, they made a great idol in the image of the God, they decorated and dressed it, in the same way they made large bones that they deposited at the feet of the idol, they also offered other "breads" such as small tortillas ; after the party they divided them to eat

— Gobierno de México

But, where is the dead spoken here?, or All Saints?, or the bread of the dead? I don't understand what relationship there is. In my opinion, the entire Origin§Mesoamerica section should be taken with a pinch of salt. The section ends with the sentence I commented on earlier, the myth of the amaranth heart, which is explained here as if it were true, but it is only a myth (read the article in Spanish for more information on this). Excuse me if there are mistakes in my English, I'm not native. I'll keep attentive – El Mono 🐒 (es.wiki account) 07:22, 6 June 2022 (UTC)