On Day of the Dead, tourists bump shoulders with celebrating families in San Andrés Mixquic

SAN ANDRES MIXQUIC, Mexico — As night falls over the cemetery in San Andrés Mixquic, a historic village on the outskirts of Mexico City, the family of Ángel Jiménez del Águila huddles around his grave.

"Salucita for our dead," says Jesús, one of Jiménez del Águila's sons, raising a toast to his father, who died in 2010.

Only a few hours remain before the door between the world of the living and the dead opens: the family has gathered to honor Ángel Jiménez del Águila during the Day of the Dead, a traditional Mexican celebration of departed loved ones held Nov. 1 and 2.

After days of cleaning graves and decorating headstones with marigolds, the cemetery here in San Andrés Mixquic is filled with the scent of copal incense and burning candles. It's also filled with tourists: dozens from around the world wander through the cemetery, camera flashes popping as they attempt close-up shots of families celebrating in the dusk.

The village's efforts to preserve one of Mexico's most iconic celebrations often draw these tourists searching for authentic experiences. But the influx also risks turning mourning into a spectacle, locals say, as visitors outnumber locals.

Martha Nashieli, one of Jiménez del Águila's daughters, remembers arriving at the cemetery to lay flowers at father's grave a few years ago, only to be forced to wait outside due to the volume of visitors.

"They wouldn't let me in," Nashieli said. "I was frustrated because he's my dad, I'm from here, and they weren't letting me enter because there were seas of people."

A cemetery at capacity

The Day of the Dead's central celebration occurs in Mexican cemeteries and graveyards, where families gather around the tombstones to honor their departed loved ones with songs, incense and votive offerings. It is often erroneously compared to Halloween, though the two holidays may share ancestry in Catholicism's All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day. Others believe the Day of the Dead is uniquely Mexican, with some experts postulating that its origins go back thousands of years.

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Nashieli, 40, grew up seeing tourists among the headstones. Since childhood, she's accompanied her family every Nov. 2 to visit her grandparents' graves, surrounded by outsiders.

"Suddenly, something intimate becomes — I wouldn't want to put it this way — but it becomes a spectacle, doesn't it?" Nashieli said. "And this is something intimate, something very private. At each grave, there's a sense of communion."

Nashieli knows visitors are part of Mixquic's story, and she doesn't want them to stop coming. As she sees it, the dilemma is how to share a tradition they want the world to know about – without losing the space and intimacy that keeps it alive.

"The truth is, there just isn't enough room for all of us anymore," she said. "We're very cramped. Our cemetery, well, there's simply no room for more people."

In 2025, around 100,000 people visited the cemetery between Oct. 31 and Nov. 2, according to Mexico City government figures — roughly seven times the village's population, all in three days.

'Like little animals in a zoo'

In the past, authorities installed a bridge over the cemetery so visitors could look down at the graves without occupying the space where families carry out their rituals, recalls Driselda Sánchez-Aguirre, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, who has studied mass tourism in Mixquic.

The measure drew criticism because some residents felt they were being watched "like little animals in a zoo," she said, and the bridge was ultimately used only once.

Today, the only measures in place are recommendations in Mexico City's official tourism guide, which advises visitors to ask families for permission before taking photographs and to avoid using flash.

Mexico City Mayor Clara Brugada has also acknowledged that the Mixquic cemetery lacks sufficient space for burials and pledged to work toward a solution, but the initiative does not explicitly address tourism.

Simply asking tourists to respect the cemetery is not enough, according to Sánchez-Aguirre.

"When the cemetery exceeds its physical capacity, individual responsibility gets lost in the crowd," she explains. When visitors see others using flash photography, speaking loudly, or stepping on graves to get a better angle, they may start to think that "this is what everyone does."

As an alternative, she proposes preparing visitors before they enter the cemetery by giving them clear instructions on how to behave: "You are entering a sacred space where families keep vigil over their loved ones," she says, describing the message visitors should receive. "This is not a spectacle."

Nashieli maintains that visitors from around the world have a role to play in these special days, so long as they are respectful.

In her view, their curiosity about the Day of the Dead helps keep the tradition alive.

"It becomes a kind of communion," she told CNN during last year's celebrations. "Even if we don't know them, we know they come with respect and a desire to learn about our traditions. So, we invite them to come respectfully – to come live our tradition, to get to know it, to preserve it, to take it back to their own homes."