¡Calaverita!
For someone very much alive
Monday, 2 November 2026 · Día de Muertos
Type a name, pick their quirks and La Catrina will do the rest.
Calaveras literarias
La Catrina is coming for your friend
Every November, Mexican newspapers, classrooms and families write calaveritas: cheeky rhyming poems that imagine Death coming for someone very much alive, and usually losing. José Guadalupe Posada's skeletons first appeared on printed sheets of these verses. Write one for a friend.
Where calaveritas come from
Calaveras literarias are short, mocking epitaphs in verse. They poke fun at the faults and quirks of a particular person by imagining a surprise visit from "La Calaca", "La Flaca" or "La Huesuda", all nicknames for Death. Around the turn of the 20th century, the engraver José Guadalupe Posada illustrated broadsheets of these verses with dancing skeletons. One of them, the Calavera Garbancera, mocked people who put on European airs. In 1947 Diego Rivera painted her in fine clothes in his mural Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Central, standing beside Posada himself, and she became La Catrina, from catrín, a well-dressed dandy.