Transcultural Ancestors and the Politics of Memory: Comparative Rituals in Thailand and Mexico

Abstract

Ancestor worship has often been examined within specific cultural or religious
contexts, yet its role as a transcultural arena where memory, ritual, and power
intersect remains underexplored in comparative scholarship. This article
analyzes ancestor ceremonies in Thailand and Mexico, arguing that these
practices operate beyond local religiosity to function as sites through which
colonial and semi-colonial legacies are negotiated within contemporary global
modernities. Drawing on postcolonial theory and transcultural memory
studies, the study conducts a comparative review of ethnographic and
historical literatures on Thailand’s Sat Duen Sip and Mexico’s Día de los
Muertos. The analysis highlights shared ritual elements offerings, sacred
spaces, and cyclical remembrance while also identifying divergences shaped
by distinct spiritual formations and colonial experiences: Buddhist-animist
traditions within a semi-colonial context in Thailand, and Catholic-indigenous
syncretism under Spanish colonial rule in Mexico. Rather than treating
ancestor worship as a static cultural inheritance, the article situates these rituals
as evolving strategies of cultural negotiation, resistance, and identity-making.
By bringing together two rarely juxtaposed cases from the Global South, this
study contributes to ongoing Cultural Studies debates on ritual hybridity,
transcultural memory, and alternative modernities beyond Eurocentric
frameworks.