Day of the Dead: Time to Celebrate : ‘It’s a Time to Teach Our Children That Death Is a Natural Thing, a Part of Life’

Dolores Ibarra knelt to light the candles on the altar that she carefully set up over the weekend in a corner of her front yard in Pasadena, to honor her dead son and commemorate Dia de los Muertos-- or Day of the Dead--the age-old Mexican Catholic tradition rooted in the country’s pre-Hispanic past.

The boy smiled at his mother from an old photograph in the center of the candle-lit altar, which was laden with flowers, miniature skeletons, a crucifix and other religious articles. There were other ofrendas or offerings, such as a jump rope--one of the boy’s favorite toys--as well as some of his favorite foods, including a dish of candied pumpkin and atole, a sweet drink made of corn meal.

At midnight, Ibarra and her six children would gather before the altar to reminisce about the dead child, offer a rosary for him and perhaps make up calaveras, the mocking little verses known as “skeletons,” that poke fun at the idiosyncrasies of the living as if they were dead.

“This is not a sad occasion,” Ibarra explained. “It’s a time to be with our dead and to teach our children that death is a natural thing, a part of life, and not something to be afraid of.”

The Mexican holiday blends the Roman Catholic celebration of All Souls’ Day on Nov. 2 with the more ancient and intimate acceptance of death of the Indian culture. While the Christian tradition clearly separates life and death, in the Indian tradition death marks the beginning of life in another world, with the dead visiting the living from time to time and partaking of such offerings.

In the uniquely Mexican style, the observance is also marked by lighthearted playfulness.

The Dia de Los Muertos celebration in Los Angeles, which participants say is undergoing a revival, is as varied as the community that observes it. It ranges from the traditional altars set up at home by recently arrived Mexican immigrants to exhibits set up by second- and third-generation Chicano artists and folklorists at area galleries and museums.

The observances include All Souls’ Day Masses at Catholic churches, religious Indian ceremonies and traditional purification rites at sweat lodges.

They are held at parks and neighborhood centers in Latino communities, including downtown’s Olvera Street, and even at the homes of non-Latino collectors of Mexican folk art who are enchanted by the humorous element in the uniquely Mexican view of death.

Toy calaveras or skeletons crafted in Mexico to celebrate the day, and found at a few specialty stores in Los Angeles, come in all shapes and sizes--from life-size grinning calaveras in mariachi get-up with musical instruments in hand to miniature dancing, hard-drinking and otherwise frolicking toy skeletons, representing brides and grooms, rock musicians, athletes and even political figures such as President Reagan.

A special bread, a sweet loaf called pan de muerto, or bread of the dead, is prepared in the Mexican style at some bakeries in East and Central Los Angeles Latino neighborhoods.

Despite their focus on death, participants say that Dia de Los Muertos is a celebration of life. By talking and joking about death, playing with it, celebrating and even dancing with it, Mexicans turn death into something familiar and less frightening.

Some add that they commemorate the day because the tradition satisfies important needs: a way of coping with the death of loved ones, of maintaining an important link with one’s ancestors and, in so doing, with one’s cultural roots and identity.

Part of a Cycle

“ Dia de los Muertos is not a worship of death, but a recognition that life and death are one in the same, part of the same cycle. It is a communion with our ancestors and a recognition that after death our spirits go on living in succeeding generations,” said Arnaldo Solis, a psychiatrist and member of a group of Latino mental health workers who participated in a cross-cultural, religious observance at an East Los Angeles community center Friday night.

The celebration, which was in part a tribute to Florencio Yescas, a longtime teacher of Mexican Indian dance in Los Angeles who died earlier this year, focused on the pre-Hispanic roots of the holiday. It included an elaborate altar or ofrenda in the center of the hall, Aztec dancing by Yescas’ former students, and prayers by the elders of North American and Mexican Indian tribes, a Buddhist monk, and a black Christian minister.

“The death image has been part of Mexican culture since the Aztecs,” said Sister Karen Boccalero, a Franciscan nun and director of Self-Help Graphics, a community arts center in East Los Angeles that for many years sponsored Day of the Dead celebrations and is credited with playing a major role in the holiday’s resurgence in Los Angeles. Mexican and Chicano artists helped organize a community celebration that grew into an elaborate public event--a parade to nearby Evergreen Cemetery, musical, dance and theatrical performances and art fairs.

As others in the community began to celebrate the day, Self-Help Graphics has reduced its role.

Maintaining a Concept

“We wanted to make a public thing out of what people were doing in their homes,” she said, adding that “it wasn’t our aim to do it exactly as it is done in Mexico, but to maintain the concept . . . reaffirming life, by looking at death.”

For one thing, she pointed out, the Mexican tradition of picnicking at the cemetery on the Day of the Dead, after tending the graves of loved ones, is not allowed here. So adaptations are required.

Last year, Dolores Ibarra and several of her neighbors fashioned a symbolic cemetery in the yard of her home to honor their dead. They set up altars on the graves, as they had done in their native Mexico, decorating them with flowers and food offerings to welcome the dead they believe return to Earth to visit relatives and friends on that day.

Maintaining the tradition is not easy outside their native country. Even in Mexico, social observers bemoan the fact that the uniquely Mexican tradition is losing ground, especially in urban centers, to the American influence of Halloween.

“When we first arrive here, society makes us feel as if our customs and traditions are unworthy,” said Ibarra, 47, who immigrated to the United States more than a decade ago. “But over time, you realize that what we have is valuable, even though it is different.”