I’d like to say thanks again to everyone for the responses – it’s been an interesting read. This response is long, but I’ve spent a lot of time looking into this.

With respect to sugar skulls and after performing my own independent research, Mexicans generally think that the use of sugar skulls by persons outside of the Mexican and Mexican diaspora cultures can be problematic, but is not necessarily so. (I can’t really say people of other races because Mexican/Latino is not a race.) I put the question out there because I thought this forum would be helpful and it’s useful to know whether audience members would believe that they should be offended on behalf of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans (even if those people themselves may appreciate the use of the motif). Generally speaking, as described further below, Mexicans are proud of their culture and happy to see others appreciate and honor it (but they don’t want it to be bastardized or treated as decoration).

On an official level, Mexico supports other cultures taking steps to appreciate Dia de los Muertos. In fact, the official Mexican tourism agency is currently running a contest to see who has the best sugar skull makeup for Dia de los Muertos, which provides strong support for the notion that it is not offensive to every Mexican person. Further, in 2013, the Mexican government held a Dia de los Muertos celebration for Parisians because it felt it had a duty to disseminate its culture beyond its borders (thankfully I can read Spanish). On an unofficial level, the Mexicans and Mexican-Americans who have decided to write on this issue want people to understand that sugar skulls are part of a larger culture, and that the context should be understood (which is that Dia de los Muertos is meant to be a happy occasion for people to create altars with offerings to their deceased loved ones and to visit their graves, and that sugar skulls are either candies you place on the altars or face makeup for more important events). There is a bit of a White Savior complex if we think we know better than Mexicans with respect to whether they think their culture is being improperly appropriated – per the official acts, it seems that the country of Mexico thinks that it’s a good thing for people of other cultures to take part in Dia de los Muertos.

Mexico is a very diverse country of over 100 million people (Dia de los Muertos does not have the same level of importance across the country), and the Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the United States are diverse as well. Apparently, sugar skulls are similar to Jack-o-Laterns in the United States, although the context is different since sugar skulls are meant – in the tradition of the original 1910-1913 La Calavera Catrina by José Guadalupe Posada – to represent how death comes for us all but we should still live. You can also write the name of a deceased loved one on the skull to honor a particular person. With that context, the sugar skulls carry an incredible and beautiful meaning, and one that is much more specific that just death. I’ll have to decide if that meaning is something that inspires me enough to carry me through the 3-6 month process of creating a piece, or if I’ll go in another direction (although it’s not like there are a ton of ideas out there for face makeup that’ll render you incognito).