A hillside cemetery of above-ground tombs painted like a toy town that forgot it was for the dead: turquoise cubes, pink chapels the size of a shed, yellow houses, crosses stacked where the slope runs out of room. It does not feel like a garden of rest, it feels like a tiny neighbourhood that changed its residents and kept the paint. Mayan fire ceremonies share the ground with Catholic crypts. The color is not decoration: white for fathers, turquoise for mothers, pink for girls, pale blue for boys, a hard yellow for grandparents and the sun that watches them. There is also a shrine to the chicken-bus drivers who died on the mountain roads.
What stays with you is how little gloom there is here: it does not feel sombre or serious, like a traditional cemetery. It feels light, dreamy, playful; even more than most places built for the living. It literally makes the dead, feel alive.
Key features include:
Hillside of brightly painted above-ground tombs and miniature chapels
Color coded by family role
Mayan fire ceremonies and copal
Views over town and highlands
Close to Iglesia de Santo Tomás and the market
Color coded by family role
Mayan fire ceremonies and copal
Views over town and highlands
Close to Iglesia de Santo Tomás and the market
