During a recent thunderstorm, I was reminiscing about my days growing up in my beloved Barrio El Azteca in Laredo, Texas when my beloved Mamá had the habit of covering all the mirrors. Her custom shows up in Mexican, Indigenous, and broader folk beliefs. Mirrors were believed to attract lightning and during times of fear or spiritual vulnerability, when reflective surfaces were thought to invite harmful forces. This is not a mainstream or universal Spanish, Mexican or Mexican American practice today, but it did exist in certain regions and families. It is part of a larger pattern of protective folk customs that blended religion with local superstition, which often fits strongly with Mexican folk beliefs, which often mix:
- Indigenous worldviews
- Spanish Catholicism
- Local superstition
In many Mexican households, and especially in our own home, Mamá covered mirrors during storms because she believed that:
- Mirrors were believed to draw lightning
- Lightning could “enter” through reflective surfaces
- Storms were seen as spiritually charged moments
This belief is especially common in older barrios and rural communities, and especially in our own home in the Barrio El Azteca. There is no direct Christian doctrine about covering mirrors during storms, but Christianity has long coexisted with folk beliefs about:
- Spirits during storms
- The danger of reflective surfaces
- The need to protect the home during natural events
So, while not “official,” it fits into a broader folk environment where storms were seen as moments requiring spiritual caution. Given the time, place, and cultural mix of mid‑20th‑century South Texas, my mother’s habit was probably a Mexican folk tradition with distant echoes of:
- Spanish superstition
- Indigenous beliefs
- Old‑world Spanish and Mediterranean customs that filtered into Iberian culture centuries earlier
Traditions like these often survive because they feel protective, even if people no longer remember exactly where they came from.
In Jewish tradition, the practice of covering mirrors in a house of mourning is known as shiva mirror‑covering, part of the broader customs observed during shiva, the seven‑day period after a death. Mirrors are covered so mourners are not distracted by their own reflection and can focus on grief, memory, and prayer. It also reflects an old belief that moments of death and mourning create a spiritually charged space, one in which reflective surfaces might invite forces better left undisturbed. That idea—of mirrors as spiritually open or vulnerable—echoes across many cultures, and it resonates deeply with the memories you carry from your own childhood.
During that recent thunderstorm, when I found myself thinking back to my days living in the Barrio El Azteca in Laredo, Mamá’s habit of covering the mirrors connected my home to that same ancient instinct for protection. In her case, it was not about mourning but about storms—moments when the world felt unsettled, loud, and spiritually alive. In Mexican, Indigenous, and broader folk traditions, mirrors were believed to attract lightning, to act as portals for danger, or to draw in forces that roam during moments of natural upheaval.
Even though this is not a universal Mexican or Mexican American custom today, it lived strongly in certain families and older barrios, shaped by a blend of Indigenous worldviews, Spanish Catholicism, and local superstition. In my home, storms were not just weather events; they were moments when Mamá felt the need to shield the household, to close off anything that might invite harm—just as Jewish mourners cover mirrors to protect the spiritual space of grief.
My mother’s gesture, then, becomes part of a much larger human story: across continents and centuries, people have covered mirrors during times of vulnerability—whether after a death, during a storm, or in moments when the boundary between the everyday and the spiritual felt thin. Traditions like these survive because they offer comfort and protection, even when their origins fade. And in my memory of Mamá, standing in our Barrio El Azteca home as thunder rolled outside, her hands gently draping cloth over each mirror, I can feel how her belief carried echoes of ancient worlds—Spanish, Indigenous, Mediterranean—woven into the fabric of your family’s life.
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Copyright 2026 by Gilberto Quezada.