"In Mexico you have death very close. That's true for all human beings because it's a part of life, but in Mexico, death can be found in many things"
About this Quote
Bernal is doing something slyly generous here: he’s refusing the tourist-board version of Mexico as either sun-drenched escapism or cartel-stained headline, and instead pointing to a daily intimacy with mortality that feels cultural, aesthetic, even practical. The first sentence sets the baseline: death is universal. Then he pivots - “but in Mexico” - not to claim exceptional suffering, but exceptional visibility. That’s the key move. He’s talking about a place where death isn’t kept behind hospital curtains and euphemisms so much as worked into public symbols, jokes, rituals, and design.
The subtext is a critique of cultures (including much of the U.S. and Europe) that treat death as a failure of wellness, a taboo, a private shame. When Bernal says “death can be found in many things,” he’s hinting at how Mexico metabolizes the fact of death into art and everyday life: the candy skull that’s both playful and pointed, the altar that makes grief social, the folk iconography that turns fear into color and craft. It’s not morbidity; it’s management.
Context matters: as an actor who’s moved between Mexican cinema and global platforms, Bernal is also translating Mexico for outsiders without flattening it. He’s insisting on complexity: yes, violence exists, but so does a long, layered tradition of staring death in the face and refusing to let it monopolize meaning. The line works because it’s less a claim about Mexico’s “darkness” than about its candor - death as neighbor, not just catastrophe.
The subtext is a critique of cultures (including much of the U.S. and Europe) that treat death as a failure of wellness, a taboo, a private shame. When Bernal says “death can be found in many things,” he’s hinting at how Mexico metabolizes the fact of death into art and everyday life: the candy skull that’s both playful and pointed, the altar that makes grief social, the folk iconography that turns fear into color and craft. It’s not morbidity; it’s management.
Context matters: as an actor who’s moved between Mexican cinema and global platforms, Bernal is also translating Mexico for outsiders without flattening it. He’s insisting on complexity: yes, violence exists, but so does a long, layered tradition of staring death in the face and refusing to let it monopolize meaning. The line works because it’s less a claim about Mexico’s “darkness” than about its candor - death as neighbor, not just catastrophe.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mortality |
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