There are two common sayings about skulls in Spanish; “Calavera no chilla” (skull don’t scream)and “Calavera no llora” (skull don’t cry). Worth your time trying to work out
what they mean if you want to know how LatAm operates culturally.
In the light of the rejection, disgust etc of (mainly) Irish citizens to seeing pictures of Michael Dywer’s dead, bulletholed body plastered all over news media, RG over at The Mex Files has written an excellent article about the Latino attitude towards death and why photos such as the one of Dwyer are pretty normal fare here in LatAm.
I thoroughly recommend RG’s post as it gives concise but deep insight into the region. After all, showing non-locals a bit about the way LatAm ticks and people’s cultural attitudes is one of the reasons a blog such as this humble corner of cyberspace serves any sort of purpose. The old truism of “racism doesn’t travel well” applies to cybervoyages, too.
So anyway, go see RG’s superlative article, it’s on this link. I’ve added a comment on the bottom of his note and it’d be great to see some more reflections from other people there, too.