the traditional sugar skulls from the Calazucho craft workshop

Miguel Ángel Hernández Rivera is an artisan of sugar and chocolate skulls in his family business, Calazulocated in the Gustavo A Madero mayor’s office.

The craft workshop calaveria remains active in the hands of the fourth generation of the Hernandez family. Calazucho began its history in the 1940s a few blocks from where it is now located.

Mr. Miguel Ángel remembers that his father started this traditional trade that allows the Day of the Dead offerings to be decorated with colors and flavors.

Coming from Guerrero, they knew how to make sugar candies, which led them to experiment with skulls.

Mr. Miguel Ángel and his 14 brothers learned this trade as children.

From a very young age he began placing the eyes and refining the skulls; Now, in the same way, he taught his five children, who despite being engineers by profession, do not stop supporting his father with the manufacture of these traditional sweets. Now his grandchildren are the ones who are learning, to keep the tradition alive.

The calaveritas process is completely handmade, there is no machine included in the work and everything is done by hand; from the clay molds that are creations of Mr. Miguel, the emptying of refined sugar, while the decorations of each piece are made by his wife, his sister and his niece.

Las Calazucho skulls They are known worldwide, they have reached countries such as Germany, Spain, Sweden, Colombia and the United States, among others.

The process begins by heating the sugar to 90 degrees, which has to boil three times before going into the mold, sugar it is changed color from transparent to white, with a hand shake to be processed.

The emptying of the sugar in the clay molds is the most dangerous step, since it is necessary to be very careful to avoid burns, this is the same process for chocolate.

When they cool down, the little skulls are taken out of the molds so that the fine hands of the family are in charge of decorating the pieces with bitumen that the family has prepared.

The covid-19 pandemic In Mexico, it affected all branches of the economy, but this year, as sales gradually returned to normality, they have grown.

On average, the Hernández family produces up to 30,000 sugar and chocolate skulls.

Mr. Miguel only asks that people continue to consume what is local and traditional, which is very different from machine-made pieces to those made by hand.