Pablo Neruda and members of the community who have
passed away.
But, before we can celebrate, let’s educate. Here’s a
(highly abridged) look at the history and art surrounding
Día de los Muertos, and perhaps why you should think
twice before painting a DDLM skull on your face come
Halloween.
“La Catrina” and many other reproductions of Posada,
as well as original works inspired by Posada, have been
shipped from Mexico to the Jordan Schnitzer for the
exhibits, thanks in part to Morales. Morales worked with
the Mexican government — Instituto Estatal de Cultura de
Guanajuato, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes — to bring
Mexican artists and art to Eugene.
“They are concerned about the situation of migrants
here in the United States,” Morales says of the cultural
wing of the Mexican government. “One of the problems
is the loss of identity. By supporting cultural values, then
they can have esteem.” For Latino immigrants and the
Chicano population in the U.S., Morales says, “lack of
esteem is a problem.”
That was a major impetus for Morales: By bringing
renowned Mexican art to Eugene, he could help build
esteem for and of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans
living here.
“When you are proud of who you are, nobody can
smash it,” Morales says.
RELIGIOUS ROOTS
“First, people need to understand what is the meaning
of the celebration,” Armando Morales tells me over a cup
of coffee. “Death in Mexico is very important.” Morales
has been a cultural icon in Eugene for more than 30 years,
after moving from Guanajuato, Mexico, in 1978. Morales,
a Spanish teacher at Oak Hill School for two decades and
a community advisor for UO MEChA, kicked off the fi rst
Eugene DDLM celebrations in 1981 and continues to
curate the celebrations at the JSMA and Oak Hill School.
(MEChA is a nationwide Chicano student organization.)
In Mexican Christianity (a mixture of Mesoamerican
beliefs and Catholicism), Morales explains, “It is a
challenge to die.” Those who die in battle, giving birth,
as infants, from drowning or other water-related deaths go
to their respective heavens. But for the rest, Morales says,
there are nine steps, or tests, to pass before reaching Mictlan
(the Land of Death). These stages include traversing
mountains that crash together and crossing underground
rivers and vast deserts.
“That is why when you die in Mexico, they bury you
with a sack of food, a glass of water, with blankets —
because it is going to help you pass these stages,” he says.
“This is the philosophy that we have in this celebration,”
adding that “We believe that our dead people come to the
earth and visit us and we receive them with welcome, with
food, with drinks, with everything. That is why we have
ofrendas.” (Morales is adamant the proper term is ofrenda:
“It is not altar; it is ofrenda because you offer.”)
These ofrendas can be considered the beating heart of
DDLM. The bright colors and scents — of marigolds, copal,
sugar skulls, colorful banners — are there to help guide spirits
to and from the ofrenda. In some places, family members
will lay down paths of marigold petals from a grave to an
ofrenda so the returning spirits don’t get lost. Their portraits
at the ofrenda, along with their favorite things (food, books,
cigarettes) welcome these spirits — usually deceased family
members and friends. These memorials span two days, Nov.
1 for Día de los Inocentes (for children’s spirits) and Nov. 2
for Día de los Muertos (for adult spirits).
Local artist Analee Fuentes, who created a painting
specifi cally for Maude Kerns’ DDLM celebration, makes
a home ofrenda on her dresser for her grandmother every
year. “They’re not really dead until we no longer speak
their name,” she says.
SAVING THE DíA
CALAVEREANDO CONMIGO LIVING RECKLESSLY WITH ME
BY ROBERTO ACOSTA YANES SHOWS AT JSMA
BONA LISA BY ANALEE FUENTES
DEATH WELCOMES ART
These religious and cultural beliefs inform the concept
of and attitude toward death in Mexico, which shine
through in the art of Día de los Muertos, and vary wildly
from beliefs held in the U.S.
“It’s part of your daily life. People die and you’re going
to die too,” says Jill Torres, a teacher at Eugene’s Buena
Vista Spanish Immersion School and a community adviser
for UO MEChA, who will be giving educational DDLM
presentations at the JSMA. “Here, it’s like this whole
taboo. You say people ‘passed away.’ You can’t even say
‘they died’ because it’s considered insensitive.”
Fuentes, who paints her own collection of DDLM-
inspired work like skeleton mermaids and a skeleton Frida
Kahlo, points out there is a “strong element of humor” in
the art — because for Latino cultures, death is not morbid,
it’s part of the cyclical nature of life. She uses Posada’s
famous “La Catrina” etching from 1910, depicting a lady
skeleton wearing a fancy hat bursting with plumes and
fl owers, as an example. The image, she explains, illustrates
that regardless of wealth and class, we all die. This good
humor can be seen in the holiday’s other art forms, such as
elaborately painted ceramics and expressive papier mâché
and wooden sculpture.
LA CUCARACHA THE COCKROACH BY FRANCISCO PALACIOS OLMOS
SHOWS AT JSMA
Perhaps pride can’t be smashed, but there are certainly
those who — both intentionally and unintentionally — are
destructive to other cultures, especially if those cultures
are not predominant. One example is Cinco de Mayo. Both
Morales and Torres tell me they have stopped celebrating
the holiday.
“I don’t even want to go out sometimes on Cinco de
Mayo because I just feel so angry,” Torres says. “It’s
always essentialized to the poncho, the sombrero and the
giant mustache.”
Morales says the holiday, mostly celebrated in the
U.S., started to shift in the ’80s from a Chicano cultural
celebration to an excuse to get drunk. “Mexican restaurants
and the beer companies,” he says, were at fault. “Then
later, in the 1990s, it became worse — worse with the
students of the UO. Now they put mustaches and hats on
for fraternities and sororities and they walk the streets to
fi nd a place to drink,” he says, adding with a wince, “Cinco
de Drinko.”
Morales, Torres and Fuentes all agree that beyond drunk
college kids perpetuating racist stereotypes, the most real
threat to a cultural heritage is commercialization.
“It could start to happen with Día de los Muertos,”
Morales says. “Some places think it’s Halloween, Mexican
Halloween … It has nothing to do with Halloween.” (In
fact, it has started. Flip through newspapers in town,
including this one, and fi nd DDLM imagery used to sell
Halloween goods and beer.)
“Once you commercialize it, it loses its meaning,”
Torres says. “For those of us who hang onto it for that
cultural meaning, to have somebody else completely using
it to their benefi t that’s erasing that meaning is really
diffi cult to deal with.”
But, that doesn’t mean the opposite is true, that no one
can celebrate DDLM unless they are Latino or Chicano.
“I don’t own Day of the Dead. Hispanics don’t,”
Fuentes says. But she adds for those wanting to celebrate
other cultures, “Be aware of what you’re doing. Put things
within the context.”
Torres also notes the internal battles she has over this
kind of cultural appropriation. “As a younger Latino, it’s
hard because it’s like, what parts of the culture can we
change and what parts do we need to maintain?” she says.
“It’s culture, you can’t limit it. But at the same time, it just
feels wrong sometimes.”
At the end of our chat, I ask Morales how he feels about
the late Susan Dearborn Jackson — a white American
woman, who wrote her UO folklore thesis, “Death and
Fiesta,” about DDLM in 1992 — starting the Día de los
Muertos celebrations at Maude Kerns 20 years ago.
“Without being Mexican, she promoted Mexican
culture. The issue is not white or black or brown or pink,”
he says. “The issue is present the real thing. Susan did that.
She investigated it. She studied it.”
For more information about the art and events of Día de los Muertos,
visit mkartcenter.org, jsma.uoregon.edu, analeefuentes.com and
eugeneartelatino.wordpress.com
eugeneweekly.com • October 17, 2013
13