Skeleton marching bands and dancers in butterfly skirts join in Mexico City’s Day of the Dead parade

By LISSETTE ROMERO
Associated Press

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Thousands of people have turned out to see Mexico City’s Day of the Dead parade. Costumed dancers, drummers and floats took a festsive turn down the city’s Paseo de la Reforma boulevard Saturday all the way to the historic colonial main square. There were marching bands disguised as skeletons and dancers with skull face paint performing in Indigenous costumes. The smell of traditional resinous copal incense hung heavy over the parade. A skeleton drum group pounded out a samba-style beat, while blocks away dancers swirled long skirts painted to resemble the wings of monarch butterflies, which traditionally return to spend the winter in Mexico around the Day of the Dead.