And, no, I'm not talking about the crime that never appeared that just about everyone (all of whom have never been to Mexico City) warned us about. Nor am I talking about lost luggage or missing a connection in an airport or forgetting our passports or something like that because none of that happened to us on this trip either. I'm not even talking about Montezuma's Revenge, although some of us came a bit close on that one.
I'm talking about something much worse: overtourism.
So I get it. I'm part of the problem. The very fact that I witnessed an overtourism situation as a tourist is clearly an issue because part of the reason it was so bad was the fact that I was there participating. But I will say once we realized how bad it was, we sat this one out and tried to not make it worse.
Last week I published a blog post about our time in Mexico City participating in the annual Día de los Muertos (or Day of the Dead) celebration. It was a multi-day experience for us which involved attending a giant parade in the middle of a Saturday afternoon accompanied by a lot of learning and eating and absorbing everything the festival had to offer.
The highlight of our days abroad for the Day of the Dead was a pair of cemetery visits. The first one, to Mexico City's Panteón Xilotepec, was incredibly intimate largely due to the kindness of some strangers inviting us into their family for 10 minutes or so to help us understand what Día de los Muertos really means. The next night, in the village of Mixquic (pronounced miss keek) was supposed to be even better.
According to the internet (always dangerous, I know), the Día de los Muertos celebration in Mixquic is supposed to be the most authentic in the area surrounding Mexico City. The transformation particularly of the gravesites in the cemetery of those who are honored on the two days of the celebration was supposed to be extravagant and traditional and honestly, the level of effort applied in the graveyard itself was spectacular. The care and attention to detail, particularly with the marigolds, was astonishing.
The village itself, with all of 14,000 or so residents sits just within the city limits of Mexico City and is about a 90 minute to two hour drive (as is everything else in Mexico City) from the city center. We boarded a bus just before 1 p.m. which after check-ins and coordination with other buses and traffic and everything else, would get us to Mixquic at about 4 p.m., way before the traditional lighting of candles in the cemetery at about 8 p.m.
We arrived in Mixquic to find a street fair with food stall after food stall after food stall in full swing to support the day's events. We followed our guide from our bus parking spot all the way into town, which ended up being a good 30 minute walk, and then stopped to the side of the village's church near the convent steeple. That route took us through part of the famous cemetery which four or so hours later would be the focus of pretty much everyone not working a food stall in town.
Our first cemetery walk in front of the church was tight. There were definitely people there both to gawk at the artistry of the gravesites and also to spend time with family both living and deceased. The small path (way smaller than Panteón Xilotepec the previous night) was full but there was clearly room enough to walk without having to dodge or stop for people too much. Our tour group split up, we found a baño and then circulated through the church to see the Día de los Muertos decorations in that building.
Then we decided to walk through the rest of the cemetery on the side of and behind the church. It was six-ish and we thought walking the graveyard early would enable us to find a quiet spot maybe near the perimeter to camp out and wait for 8 p.m.
This was one of the most uncomfortable experiences I've had in traveling recently. It was clear that there were people who lived in or near the village who were there to celebrate and honor loved ones who had passed on. It was also clear that that vast majority of people in the cemetery were not local and were there to watch whatever was going to happen that night. The latter group of people were everywhere and those people (which included me) were clearly impeding the ability of the residents to get to where they needed to be.
As we inched past one grave, we heard a woman who appeared to be there to visit family say "todos gringos" to the person she was talking to. I don't speak more than maybe 100 words of Spanish so I don't really know what she was saying but I do know that "todos gringos" means "all foreigners" and that meant me and us and that meant we were harming not helping.
We kept going, still with the intent of finding a spot in the back to stay and watch. But as we moved further and further into the graveyard, the paths between the tombstones got more and more densely packed. We passed people (not local) sitting on the top of the cemetery wall with cameras and phones waiting for 8 p.m. Eventually, we found it difficult to take any step forward without running into people just standing or being in the way of a family honoring their dead. It was so intrusive and damaging to what was supposed to be happening that night that we had to leave.
Fortunately for us, there was a temporary wooden and metal staircase installed to allow you to climb over the top of the cemetery wall and down to the other side. I snapped the cover picture of this post on the way over that stairway. Check out all the people. And this is at 6:30 p.m., a full 90 minutes before the traditional cemetery lighting. I am sure in past years a decade or more ago this would have been spectacular. in 2026, it was just ugly.
When we were in Mexico City on this trip, I read an article on CNN describing this very celebration in Mixquic. The article described a situation that had become somewhat intolerable but ultimately what I took away from the read was that the village's residents were welcoming tourists but just wished they would be more respectful. I know that I read that piece with my own bias having never experienced Mixquic in late October or early November. I don't agree with my takeaway from that read now.
If the CNN article was right, in an average year, there are approximately 100,000 tourists visiting the village on Mixquic on the nights of October 31 and November 1 and 2. If those visitors are distributed evenly over the three nights, that means the out of towners outnumber the residents of Mixquic by a ratio of 2.5 to 1. And most of those tourists are likely in and around the cemetery or even on top of the walls, I am sure.
It's too much. This is not how tourism and travel is supposed to work. Maybe I'm naive. Maybe I don't understand how people think or how influencers or whatever have affected how people congregate when traveling around the planet these days. Maybe I tend to travel in shoulder seasons deliberately to avoid this sort of stuff and I just haven't realized how bad it has become in some spots on the globe in the high season or on the high day or days.
This experience made me feel bad. Not for myself, but for the people who lived there. Who had something to do other than taking pictures and then posting them online (and again...guilty of that very thing in this very blog post...) on one of the holiest and most sacred days of the year. What we and a lot of other people did that night in Mixquic was so intrusive and invasive. Once we were in the village, the only thing we could really do to make anything any better was stay out of the cemetery. So we did.
I am sure Mixquic is a very special place during Día de los Muertos. I hope the pictures that I've posted here show the level of care that people who live there take to make the graves of their ancestors and family members as special as they can be during these nights of remembrance. I am the last person who wants to tell others not to visit Mixquic during this celebration because that would seem hypocritical but if anyone asked me for advice here, I'd say stay away. Everything else that we did in Mexico City for Day of the Dead was incredible. This experience was not. And it was all our fault.
Todos gringos!
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