The event is, like many aspects of post-colonial Mexico, a melange of influences.

BBC: Mexico's Day of the Dead

From the 1560s until 1815, a fleet of Spanish galleons made an annual epic voyage from the Mexican port of Acapulco to Manila in the Philippines, carrying silver and supplies and returning with Chinese silks and porcelain that were snapped up by the wealthy in colonial Mexico and Peru.

ECONOMIST: Latin American geopolitics

Another was added after Spain went to war with Britain in 1804, and tried to increase its colonial revenues, especially from Mexico.

ECONOMIST: Millennium issue: Freeing Spanish America

Like many Latin American countries, Mexico, independence once won, put behind it its colonial past only in a series of struggles between reforming liberals and church-allied conservatives.

ECONOMIST: Mexico: Welcome to the holy father | The