This weekend, Mexican-American families across the country will gather to honor their ancestors with altars, marigolds and sugar skulls on Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. In recent years, this celebration has become more commercialized, and many in the community are wondering how they can evolve to keep it alive while preserving the centuries-old tradition.
The Day of the Dead is traditionally an intimate family event, celebrated by visiting family altars (ofrendas) and graveyards to decorate graves with flowers and sugar skulls. They bring their deceased loved one’s favorite food and hire musicians to play their favorite songs.
The skeleton is the centerpiece of the celebration, symbolizing the bones’ return to the world of the living. Like seeds planted in the soil, the dead disappear temporarily, only to return year after year, just like the annual harvest.
Families place photos of their ancestors on the ofrenda, including paper ornaments and candles, and decorate it with offerings of items loved by their loved ones, such as cigars, bottles of mezcal, mole plates, tortillas, and chocolates.
From intimate gatherings to mainstream culture
Day of the Dead celebrations in the United States and Mexico continue to evolve.
Cesareo Moreno, chief curator and visual director at Mexico’s National Museum of Fine Arts, said the release of Disney’s animated film “Coco” in 2017 transformed celebrations in northern Mexico, and increased the popularity and commercialization of Day of the Dead in the United States. Cities in the United States host festivals, and Mexico City hosts the annual Día de los Muertos parade.
Moreno said “Coco” provided a way for people who aren’t part of the Mexican-American community to learn about the tradition and embrace its beauty. But it also made the celebration more marketable.
“The Mexican American community in the United States celebrates the Day of the Dead as a cultural expression,” Moreno said. “It’s a healthy tradition and really plays an important role in the grieving process. But with ‘Coco,’ that movie really pushed it into mainstream popular culture.”
As it grew in popularity, Day of the Dead was often confused with Halloween, which changed how it was celebrated and how people understood it, Moreno said.
A modern arrangement of a traditional altar
In recent years, some within and outside the Mexican American community have turned to a more minimalist aesthetic, constructing colorless renders.
Colorful altars have been part of Mexican and Mesoamerican culture ever since the Spanish arrived and converted Mexico’s indigenous tribes to Catholicism. Some families now build altars without the traditional flowers or papel picados (multicolored lace wall hangings decorated with hearts and skulls).
Moreno said it’s okay as long as the meaning is not lost.
“If people are trying to do something a little different, that’s fine,” Moreno said. “But if people stop understanding what’s at the heart of this tradition or start transforming it, that’s what I’m against.”
Ana Ceci Lerma, a Mexican-American who lives in Texas, suspects minimalist renders satisfy her desire to create Instagram-worthy content.
“I think you can put on your altar what you want and what connects you to your loved ones,” Lerma said. “But I feel like we’ve lost a little bit of the reason why we build altars if it’s just because we like the way they look.”
Commercialization raises issues of respect.
Sehira Mota Casper, director of Latinos in Heritage Conservation, a nonprofit organization that helps preserve Latino culture, said American companies are putting profit over culture and trying to make money from Día de los Muertos the same way they do from Cinco de Mayo. Mota-Casper said major chains like Target and Walmart now sell do-it-yourself recipe kits.
“It’s starting to be culturally appropriated by people outside of our diaspora,” she said.
Although not Mexican, Beth McRae has lived in Arizona and California and has always been surrounded by Latinx culture. She has been making Day of the Dead altars since 1994.
She started collecting items related to the celebration in the early ’90s and amassed a collection of more than 1,000 items. And she throws a party to celebrate that day every year.
“It’s a great celebration because we invite our loved ones who have passed away,” McRae said.
“I threw my first Day of the Dead party in San Diego with a very meager collection, and it became an annual event,” she continued.
McCrae said she tries to pay homage by making sure the trinkets on her ofrenda come from Mexico and focusing on her loved ones who have passed away.
“This is done out of respect and love, but it’s also an opportunity to raise awareness for people who may not be familiar with that culture or who don’t belong to that culture,” McRae said.
Salvador Ordrica, a first-generation Mexican-American living in Los Angeles, said traditions need to be reinvented so younger generations can keep them alive.
“I think traditions can change,” says Ordrika. “This is a way to really keep that tradition alive as long as the core of the tradition remains.”
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Associated Press writer María Teresa Hernández in Mexico City contributed.
