From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death

Doughty is at a Día de los Muertos pageant in Mexico City with Sarah Chavez, who is the director of Doughty’s non-profit, The Order of the Good Death. While the holiday is a longtime tradition, it is typically community and family centric. The Mexican government started the huge festival after the 2016 James Bond film Spectre depicted a holiday parade in Mexico City. In the 1950s, Mexicans living in big cities stopped celebrating Día de los Muertos, calling it rural folklore. In the later part of the 20th century, when the bourgeoisie began mimicking the American Halloween, other Mexicans reinvigorated the celebration of Día de los Muertos in response as a pushback to Americanization.

Sarah’s parents’ families were immigrants from Monterrey, Mexico, to East Los Angeles, where they were displaced by building projects and developments. By the time Sarah was an adult and met her partner, she was estranged from her parents. She and her partner tried to have a baby, but the pregnancy had to be terminated when Sarah was six months pregnant. She was grief-stricken and couldn’t find solace anywhere, until she remembered that she came from “one of the most death-engaged cultures in the world” and wondered how her ancestors would deal with this type of death (84).