Cemetery Boys

The theme of change being unavoidable and growth being desirable recurs throughout Aiden Thomas’s Cemetery Boys, especially in the evolution of the brujx community’s traditional views and practices.

The brujx’ refusal to grant Yadriel his brujo quinces ceremony marks their initial rigid view of gender. The brujx community clings to their traditions and, as a result, people like Yadriel and even Catriz are pushed to the edges and rendered outcasts. Enrique—Yadriel’s father and the leader of the East Los Angeles brujx—epitomizes the traditional views held by the community. However, his faith and commitment to the supernatural powers the brujx have is stronger than his ideas about gender. When he discovers that Yadriel has been blessed by Lady Death as a brujo, Enrique sees the error of the community’s ways in their treatment of Yadriel and Catriz. He admits to Yadriel, “We were unfair to him, and you, Yadriel. It’s too late to go back and make things right with Catriz, but I promise to do everything to make sure nothing like that happens again” (280). In this moment, Enrique takes responsibility for the way the community shunned Yadriel and Catriz, and for how using tradition to justify exclusion weakened the community.