Feeding The Spirits Of Our Ancestors: How Los Angeles Celebrates Dia De Los Muertos

Growing up in a multicultural household, my brother and I attended a Spanish Saturday school known as Escuelita. It was there that I first celebrated Dia De Los Muertos. I remember learning about the holiday and building my first altar, made from cardboard. We filled it with pan dulce, different types of fruits, and Mexican chocolate, the potent scent still remaining part of my core memory.

We made sugar skulls, too, and licked the frosting from our fingertips during the decorating process and debated whether you could eat them. (You can but I wouldn’t advise it. Too hard, plus many skulls are reused since the sugar doesn’t go bad.)

Back then, it was all about the sweets. But as I’ve grown older and gained more perspective, as with most things, the celebration has taken on a great significance.

In our fast-paced world, celebrating Dia De Los Muertos gives us the time and space to reflect and collectively mourn those who have passed. It teaches us not to fear death and dying but to embrace it as part of life.

And in a post-pandemic world with a never-ending news cycle of suffering, remembering the dead has never felt more vital.

When I talked to Laura Martinez, the owner of East Los Sweets, who started her sugar skull-making business tucked away in the corner of her family’s bakery, La Central Bakery in East L.A., she said something that resonated with me.

"I didn't grow up making altars," she said. Her interest was piqued when she attended a Day of the Dead celebration in Los Angeles years ago and became fascinated with the skulls that are perhaps one of the most immediately recognizable emblems of the holiday.

Laura Martinez, of East Los Sweets, decorates sugar skulls in preparation for Dia de Muertos.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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Sugar skulls created by Laura Martinez of East Los Sweets.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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The following year, she began making her own skulls, putting her own artistic spin on them. She quickly realized how her work became a person's story: Customers who purchased them were so grateful, pouring out memories of their loved ones, she said.

Don't call it 'Mexican Halloween'

When we lose our loved ones, we often look for ways to connect with them, and Martinez's work serves as a connective link in the chain of life.

Day of the Dead or Dia De Los Muertos, the Mexican celebration that dates back thousands of years, combines indigenous celebrations and Roman Catholic traditions connected to All Saints Day and All Souls’ Day.

One thing it is not is Mexican Halloween.

The celebration occurs between Nov. 1 and 2, where legend tells us that the spirit world and the living are connected. Believers call on their loved ones who have passed to return from the land of the dead and visit, even for a moment, easing their grief and encouraging healing with happy memories.

Finding a way back home

Favorite food and drink is left out to lure and offer guidance to our loved ones so they find their way back to the homes of their living relatives.

A national holiday in Mexico, the Day of the Dead’s reach is now global. And of course there’s the 2017 release of the Oscar-winning Disney film Coco, which brought the festival and the traditions to a wider audience. Today, you can buy Day of the Dead decorations at Target, and Mexican skeleton iconography is found on everything from beer cans to children’s T-shirts.

Why it's different in L.A.

While cities across the U.S. celebrate the Day of the Dead, I’d argue that no one has embraced it quite like Los Angeles, which is the perfect setting for celebrating a holiday of mixed cultural practices.

After all, we are a city of diverse traditions that co-exist next to each other, an area familiar with paying homage to the past while embracing the future.

Day of the Dead is a product of colonization, a mash-up of European and Indigenous traditions. Los Angeles, in its current day, is representative of the struggles associated with it.

I wanted to use this opportunity to learn more about the traditions surrounding the celebration, breaking down some of the key elements. As Dia De Los Muertos drew nearer this year, I reached out to a sugar skull maker and a master altar maker. These two different artists ’ involvement in the holiday ranges from casual to fiercely devoted, which I felt was an accurate representation of how many in Los Angeles celebrate the holiday and was something I could also relate to. While I grew up learning about Dia De Los Muertos, I'm always looking to learn more — and share what I learn.

The art of sugar skulls

Sugar skulls remain a central aspect of the holiday. The skulls themselves represent an important person who has passed. Traditionally, each skull carries the name of the loved one on its forehead. A key feature is “coronas,” or flower crowns made from colorful frosting and pieces of foil placed over the eyes and other parts of the skull to give it character.

Martinez uses plastic molds to make her sugar skulls, in several different styles. However, the most popular feature is her flower crown design, made from brightly colored frostings, pink, blue, red, yellow, and orange. The skulls range in various sizes from slightly larger than a sugar cube, to her largest, about the size of a softball.

When she was doing a skull-decorating workshop at Grand Park last year, a 5-year-old boy wandered by and she asked if he wanted to decorate one.

“Oh yeah, we learned about this for Dia de los Muertos,” he exclaimed, and while he had no cultural connection to the holiday, “he gave this whole little speech to my mom. And my mom was like, ‘Wow,’. And I told her growing up, ‘I was never taught any of this.’ This has evolved massively compared to when I was growing up.”

Her sentiments are definitely something I can relate to. Growing up in the ‘90s, it felt like you had to seek out opportunities to learn about Dia de los Muertos, whereas now it feels like it’s everywhere.

A tray of pan de muerto at La Central Bakery in East Los Angeles, which has been in Laura Martinez's family since 1984.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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Martinez' first experience with sugar skulls came as a child, attending a Day of the Dead celebration at Self Help Graphics in East Los Angeles (the community-based creative arts organization, which hosts one of the longest-running Dia De Los Muertos celebrations in the U.S., now in its 50th year). Her family was there to sell their bakery’s pan de muerto, a sweet bread associated with Dia de los Muertos. But the skulls on display caught Martinez’s eye. She felt inspired to make her own. Purchasing the molds, she started making her own the following year. She sold them in the bakery case in the front of the bakery for 25 cents.

Soon, Martinez sought to design the sugar skull independently, experimenting with different iconography, such as Hello Kitty skulls and Frankenstein — images that Martinez herself, as a millennial, gravitated toward, and, as it would turn out, others would too.

Since then, their popularity has grown. She has also expanded into making sugar cookies featuring her Dia de los Muertos designs and Hello Kitty characters. Her work has been featured with the Dodgers at their Dia De Los Dodgers event, where her work was displayed throughout the park, as well as at Self Help Graphics and Grand Park, where she teaches workshops with her mother.

Building Ofrendas

Another person who shared their story with me is Aldo Cruz, the Oaxacan-born master altar maker whose work has been featured at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery’s popular Day Of The Dead festivities for the past 17 years.

Aldo Cruz, a master altar builder, poses next to an in-consturction altar at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

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Day of the Dead is celebrated throughout Mexico, but according to Cruz, Oaxaca remains the most fiercely devoted to its traditional practices.

“It’s not Halloween,” he said. “Halloween is a festival where everything is horror, monsters, and costumes; this is imaginary. The Day of the Dead, for us Oaxacans, the celebration centers around the idea of love, affection, and respect.”

Cruz grew up close to the area known as San Pablo Villa de Mital, which, according to indigenous culture, is where the dead go to rest.

Dia De Los Muertos celebrations were always part of Cruz’s legacy. He grew up loving culture and the arts. During high school, he became fascinated with the iconography celebrating the remembrance of the dead. His mother was involved in their community's Day of the Dead celebrations, despite not always having much money to build altars and buy sugar skulls. After witnessing his mother's devotion to the craft during his early teens, he fell in love with altar making and decided to make his own — and started winning contests for his work.

Searching for a community

Cruz came to the United States in 2005 at age 25. He searched for his community and attended various Oaxacan cultural events around Los Angeles. At a Guelaguetza, an Oxacan cultural event at Normandie Park, he first heard about the Dia De Los Muertos celebration at Hollywood Forever. In the 15 years since participating in the celebration at the famed cemetery, Cruz has become one of the most renowned altar makers in the city.

Aldo Cruz, at left, and a co-worker construct an altar for the upcoming Day of the Dead event at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

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When asked about what elements are required, Cruz has much to say. Showcasing that love begins with building an altar or ofrenda, which is central to remembering the dead. The ofrenda must reflect the elements of water, wind, earth, and fire.

Cruz’s altars are all-out elaborate affairs. Piled high with rows and rows of fresh produce — such as oranges, bananas, apples, and pumpkins — alongside a bottle of mezcal, sugar skulls, and religious statuettes, all swimming in a sea of orange marigolds

Cempasuchil, also known as marigolds, are a core element to the ofrendas built during Dia de Muertos.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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Food is central to the offerings. “Fruit, bread, ceramic objects, and candles are the common features that the earth offers us,” he said.

Placing favorite dishes such as tamales and plates of chicken mole on the altars is commonplace. Also, pan dulce and mugs of hot chocolate or atole, a masa-based drink, are usually featured. These offers are meant to entice our loves to visit us and have sustenance when traveling from the spirit world.

The meaning of photographs, flowers

Photographs of loved ones play an essential role, which lets the spirits of our loved ones know that presence is wanted in our homes. Flowers, specifically marigolds, or cempasúchitl, as they're known in the Nahuatl language, with their bright color and scent are meant to attract loved ones. They are said to have natural pesticides that keep the insects away from your food offerings.

This will be Aldo’s first Dia de los Muertos without his mother.

Elements for an altar Aldo Cruz is building at Hollywood Forever in preparation for the upcoming Day of the Dead event.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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She passed away right around last year's celebration. It’s an emotional time for him. When I ask if the celebration takes on a special significance for him, he tells me that it's been challenging to focus on due to the amount of work he has to do.

With each passing year, the celebration of Dia De Los Muertos takes on a great significance. As we age, people pass away, so the act of remembrance and the passage of time allows for a period of deeper reflection. Yet, now more than ever, I find myself drawn to the celebration's rituals to better understand myself and where I come from.