Tamales, mole, bread, candies, and tequila, set against a backdrop of bright orange marigolds, candles, and colorful flags—together these treats make up a feast fit for a king of yore, but these days, such a spread is likely intended to pamper the dead.
Dia de Los Muertos is a holiday Latinos set aside to honor and celebrate dead loved ones. In general, the events take place over two days: Nov. 1 being Dia de los Angelitos in honor of children who have died, and Nov. 2 celebrating adults who have passed on.
But it’s more than a celebration. It’s also the time, as many believe, when it’s easier for the souls of the dead to visit the living.
Once a ritual observed by the Nahuatl-speaking people of pre-Colombian Mexico, who dedicated the time not only to the dead but also to the end of the agricultural cycle, the celebration has endured as well as stuck close to its original roots.
Marked by vibrant color, dancing, and feasting, the celebration is anything but the solemn sort of memorial typically seen in the United States. The holiday invites a lively interpretation of the very concept of death itself. The ancient Aztecs believed death wasn’t the end of life, but a continuation of it—the ultimate liberation. Death was actually something to be celebrated, not mourned.
Out of this belief arose Dia de los Muertos. When the Spanish conquistadores arrived in Mexico, they were shocked to see the rituals that seemed to mock death. The rites had been practiced for more than 3,000 years until the Spaniards decided to impose Christian beliefs in an attempt to eradicate them. But the festivals endured and mark one of Mexico’s biggest celebrations.
“It’s an important concept in how we view life and experience life and death, it’s still honored and revered and ingrained in us,” said Dr. Gloria Velasquez, professor of modern languages and literature at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.
Versions of the celebration have spread to other Latin American countries and even Europe. Intercultural celebrations have become more popular in some communities in the United States, and in larger cities more contemporary expressions by those with artistic sensibilities have been displayed, like altars to honor the victims of the Iraq War highlighting the high casualty rate among Latino soldiers. More tongue in cheek versions have been set up to pay homage to “dead” television shows, canceled by network higher-ups. At a cemetery near Hollywood, there have even been altars to Jayne Mansfield and Johnny Ramone.
Velasquez said the celebration’s meaning hasn’t changed, even though it’s become more widespread.
“As with anything, the dominant culture will latch onto anything and see it in a mainstream way and make it more commercial,” Velasquez said. She referred to Cinco de Mayo being used as a way to sell more beer. “If something becomes commercialized it opens up for more dialogue in families,” she said.
Even thought it’s celebrated a little differently, even from region to region in Mexico, there are certain concepts that are present in any traditional Dia de Los Muertos celebration:
• Altars are set up in homes and decorated and adorned with pictures of loved ones and ofrendas or offerings.
• Candles are used on the altars to show souls the way back home. They represent the element of fire, and each soul is represented by a lit candle. An extra one is placed at the altar for the forgotten soul.
• The favorite food of loved ones is set out at the altar. In Mexico, some of the food is taken to cemeteries where families will celebrate, hold picnics, and often stay the night. For children who have died, various candies will be placed out along with toys. Deceased adults might get a favorite alcoholic beverage.
• Called cempasuchitl—meaning 20 flowers in Nahautl—marigolds are thought to attract the souls to the offerings.
• Colorful paper flags—papel picado—are cut into patterns and hung representing wind.
• Water is placed in a container for the souls to quench their thirst after their long journey to reach the altar.
• Pan de muerte—known as bread of the dead—is usually a round loaf decorated with a cross meant to look like bones and dusted with sugar.
Souls are thought to come to the offrendas to “eat the essence of the food,” and then the families eat the food, thought no longer to contain any nutritional value. Dancing and music are a big part of the celebration, as is the reciting of calaveras, which are satirical poems that often make fun of people who are alive.
In Santa Maria and Mexico, however, Dia de Los Muertos has for the most part remained steadfastly celebrated the same.
“Essentially, the idea is to remember those who passed away. It’s ironic because you’re supposed to be sad,” said Enedina Casteñeda of the Mexican-American Scholarship Cultural and Recreation Association (MASCARA).
Casteñeda said that in Mexico, big festivals are held, and it’s considered a public holiday. Depending on the region of Mexico the event is celebrated differently. In general, people travel to the cemeteries with food and spend the night to be near their loved ones.
“You really have to live it to experience it,” Casteñeda said of the Mexican celebration.
MASCARA has been celebrating the day in Santa Maria for 15 years. The event started as a single altar in the backyard of Gina Rodriguez, at the encouragement of her mother, but it became evident that the event needed to be more accessible to the public and required room to grow.
Festivities have come to the Santa Maria Town Center for the last seven years, and mall visitors can join the dead and visit the various altars, which themselves are works of art.
“It’s like a masterpiece. Every altar is unique—some are very simple, some are very elaborate,” Casteñeda said.
People have created altars for Cesar Chavez, Frida Kahlo, and for women who have died because of domestic violence. There’s even a community altar open to the public to place photos of their own loved ones.
Every year MASCARA dedicates an altar, and this year Santa Marian Paulino Pacheco will be honored. Pacheco was a longtime activist who helped many immigrants get their citizenship. He worked with the bracero program and with Cesar Chavez in the Santa Maria Valley.
Rodriguez, whose backyard held the original altar, is pleased to see how the event has grown. She said the celebration is a legacy or a tribute to her family, especially her mother and father.
Rodriguez said the message she tries to get across about death and Dia de Los Muertos is that despite the skulls and the imagery, it’s not a scary thing.
“It’s a good time, a spiritual time to remember loved ones,” she explained.
Pedro Velasquez organizes another Dia de Los Muertos celebration at the Guadalupe Cultural and Education Center in Guadalupe. The public event is more than just a display; it includes all the festivities you’d find in a similar celebration in Mexico, including food, dancing, and music.
“We don’t want the tradition to die; we try to do it as original as we can. And we don’t want to mix it up with other things, so that some might think it’s like Halloween, because it’s not,” Velasquez said.
That sentiment of holding true to the celebration is likely what’s caused it to stay strong for some many centuries. It helps that many families continue to teach the tradition to their children. Rodriguez is one of them.
“My daughters know that every year we honor my father and mother in that way,” she said.
Far from fading away with newer generations of Hispanics in the United States, the celebration is growing.
“I see a growth of students, young people are wanting to partake, they want to be a part of this,” Rodriguez said.
This year, most of the Santa Maria Valley high schools boast groups of students putting up altars. Youths are preparing the altars for the MASCARA display at the mall. As a result, many are studying more about their grandparents and the people they’ve lost, and in that way it becomes a way of storytelling or a lesson in family history—and often a time for healing, Rodriguez said.
More than anything, however, it is a link to the past for many Mexicans, an ancestral tie that will always be with them.
“When people travel and move to other places, from small villages to bigger cities, the tendency is to lose part of their culture,” Velasquez said.
“We try to remind them it’s part of our roots, part of our culture, and we need to share that with other people.”
Contact Arts Editor Shelly Cone at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 22-29, 2009.