Day of the Dead celebrations in Waco will include hundreds, if not several thousand, of the living.
Better known as Dia de los Muertos, Spanish for Day of the Dead, the occasion is marked in some Latin American cultures as a time to remember and honor loved ones and acquaintances who have died.
Celebrations include making rendas, or offerings, small altars decorated with pictures, candles, flowers, food, and other items that remember the dead; sugar skulls for kids; costumed skeletons called Catrinas, after a satirical cartoon created by Mexican artist José Posadas; holidays in churches or cemeteries; and gatherings with food, music and dancing.
In Waco, there will also be a community parade on Saturday, marching downtown along University Parks Drive to Indian Spring Park, returning from its debut last year.
People are also reading…
This weekend will also see the 12th annual Journey Ofrenda created by Waco artist Rocio Ramirez-Landoll, which has grown in scale since moving outside to the corner of Dallas and Tyler streets in East Waco.
This year’s edition will feature the addition of “Viva la Vida,” a detailed set of six skeleton mariachi musicians created from heavy paper Ramirez-Landoll and fellow Waco artist Diana Torres, performed over the past six months with a $3,000 grant from Texas Folklife.
Both used the Mexican art form of cardboard, in which heavy paper, often from empty discarded concrete or lime sacks, is moistened with glue, pressed into plaster molds and then assembled into objects.
Musical skeletons dressed in light blue with silver trim and each holding a different instrument will join the items in the Renda public on Saturday, weather permitting. The ofrenda will be performed from 9 am to 9 pm Saturday through Thursday, with live folkloric dancing by Norma Torres at 6:30 pm on Saturday, followed by a free screening of the animated film “Coco” at at 19:00.
The Dia de los Muertos parade and festival, a special event funded in part by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts, will take place Saturday, although Dia de los Muertos is traditionally marked on November 1 or 2.
Parade organizer Julie Cervantes said 45 community and social organizations will participate in this year’s parade, making it longer than last year. The parade will begin at 4:00 pm on University Parks Drive, gathering outside the Waco-McLennan County Public Health District and proceeding down University Parks to Indian Spring Park, stopping at the festival site.
In addition to lots of skulls and costumed Catrinas, the parade will include references to Mexican artist Frida Kahlo; lottery, or lottery, card; a scene that greets the television comedy “El Chavo del Ocho”, which starred the famous Mexican comic Chespirito, or Roberto Gómez Bolaños; and, in floats familiar to parade sponsors, brightly colored folk art fantasy animals called alebrijes.
The parade will last about an hour and the festival at Indian Spring Park will continue until 10 p.m. Cervantes said Telemundo television will broadcast the parade live, and wacotrib.com will host a contest next week where viewers can vote for their favorite parade entry.
Festival organizer Eric Linares said the overwhelming response to last year’s festival prompted planners to make it bigger.
“I was really blown away by the size of it,” Linares said. “It looks like the whole community came out with a few thousand people there.”
Saturday’s festival will have roughly double the number of vendors and artisans plus 10 food trucks and a music lineup combining local talent with bands from San Antonio and Austin. Children’s activities will include face painting, sugar skull decorating and coloring pages.
The musical lineup includes vocalist Giselle Vento and guitarist Frank Exum, DJ Magnum, Ballet Folklorico, San Antonio’s Mariachi las Coronelas and Austin Selena tribute band Bidi Bidi Banda.
A Muertos Plaza VIP area overlooking the Indian Spring Park amphitheater will feature food and cocktails provided by Lupita’s Restaurant and Ilegal Mezcal.
Cervantes said organizers worked to keep the spirit of Dia de los Muertos prominent in the parade and festival so it wouldn’t be overwhelmed by commercialism.
“It’s about inclusion and celebration,” she said.
Cultural details were also important in Ramirez-Landoll’s mariachi figures for the offering.
“Through these facilities, we reconnect with the country or the people,” she said.
Not only are the mariachi outfits as detailed as the actual ones, complete with silver trim down the pants, gold braid on the brim of the sombrero, silver lace appliqués, and ribbons of fabric inside the hats, but the players’ guitars, guitars, violins, and trumpets all crafted from heavy paper, wire, guitar strings and wood, they are accurate down to the tuning pegs and trumpet key buttons.
There are clever touches like the monarch butterflies, often seen in the ofrenda, instead of the bows around the musicians’ throats. The big guitar player has a pot belly, which easily supports the weight of his instrument.
The two artists used cardboard with corrugated inside removed as heavy paper for the molding, resulting in light but durable figures.
“Someone asked if you could make a piñata out of this and I said, just kidding,” Ramirez-Landoll said with a smile.
Torres, who was a student under Ramirez-Landoll’s mentorship at the Texas Folklife Project, said it reconnected her not only with her Tejano family history, but with indigenous Mexican roots she hadn’t been aware of.
“To explore the different aspects of a culture is to bring them back to our culture now,” she said.
The festival’s Linares, who also helped create a public offering for the Mayborn Museum, said it’s the connection between the past and the present, between death and life, that makes Dia de los Muertos special and special.
“The essence of Dia de los Muertos is to honor and cherish the lives of our loved ones during the time they lived with us,” he said. “It’s also a time to think about our mortality, but not in a scary way. Death gives meaning to life.”
