Janitzio has closed its cemetery to tourists for the first time during Day Of The Dead after the island’s community council reported collapsed graves, damaged crosses and sections of the perimeter wall. Only local families and friends of the people buried there are being allowed in.
The move lands in the middle of the season that draws families to cemeteries across México, when celebrations begin in October and run through the 1st and 2nd of November. Many households build altars with sweets, food, mezcal and photographs, then gather at graveyards on the night of November 1 because, by belief, the dead return briefly to meet them.
Janitzio’s celebrations were recognized by UNESCO in 2008 as Patrimonio Cultural Inmaterial de la Humanidad, a reminder that this is not just a tourist attraction but a living ritual rooted in older agricultural beliefs and later shaped by Catholic traditions after 1521. The wider Day Of the Dead period also includes the procession in Ciudad de México with decorated catrinas that was created for the 2015 James Bond film Spectre and later folded into the city’s own celebrations.
That mix of reverence and spectacle is now the strain running through the holiday. The cemetery closure shows how pressure from visitors can push a community to draw a line around a sacred place, even as the season continues and the crowds elsewhere keep growing. Authorities have not said when the cemetery will reopen, leaving the strongest symbol of the holiday on Janitzio closed to outsiders for now.
