The aura at El Centro is lively! The altares are located upstairs, while downstairs there are multiple activities for children. The mole feed is also located downstairs. There is not one room that isn’t filled with people. The room that has all the altares is very colorful and a little crammed. There is a group walking down the hall playing their instruments and making beautiful music. Behind them, a group of people are following them as they head downstairs to play their music. Downstairs, the children are getting their face painted, making bracelets, and coloring in pictures of Calaveras. The mole feed is also located downstairs. This room is especially filled with people. Everyone is either in line for food or sitting talking to friends and family.

Everyone is here and ready to set up the altar! As soon as we walked in we were able to get a glimpse of the altares that other groups have set up. Although the only people here are those in class, the room feels lively. Everyone is trying to decide how they want to set up their altar. My group is setting up the altar, which we are going to dedicate to farm workers. The set-up of the altar was very therapeutic. Everyone gathered together to create something that was larger than life. Everything that we were doing had a purpose and allowed us to be creative. Overall, setting up the altar helped those who were creating it see the beauty that death has to offer.

The night ended with Aztec dancers in the rain, I’m currently soaked and freezing but there is a radiating warmth coming from within. From seeing how personal every altar was, to the mole, to familiar faces in my community, this whole experience was so positive and healing and necessary. It is necessary for people to practice such a sacred day, I could tell in their laughter during skits and the screams and applause at the very end of  the night. What really got to me was during the Aztec dance, a great roar of thunder greeted us, an acknowledgment of the skies and ancestors of our presence. It was a beautiful moment perfectly showcasing the communication we have with nature, within our community and with the dead.

I love seeing all the different representations of the queer communities of color, it makes my heart full but with that also heavy to see all the innocent lives lost to systems of oppression whether that be homophobia or no access to health education and resources. It definitely is a reminder that altares are inherently political, as they are a form of resistance against colonialism and sharing narratives that would otherwise go unnoticed by society at large and the governing state. I really feel such a spiritual connection to the art and altares in the very heavy topics they convey in the most beautiful and eye-catching manner, so as to show the beauty in resistence, the beauty in exsistance, the beauty of life, and how the tragedy of death can begin to heal through acknowledging the preciousness of life, and how we must work on constructing these narratives to move towards a better society so that these lives can be respected while living too.

The second half of the event at El Centro is full of life and culture. There’s a vendor section where people are selling things they’ve made. A woman is selling her art and they’re beautiful drawings that express intersectionality, whether that’s the intention or not. I bought a drawing of a muerto with a banner that said ‘resist’. I think it shows how Latinx culture and American culture combine, with the current political climate calling for more and more resistance. Then there were the performances. People of all ages were dancing and playing music, it was truly special seeing everyone so full of life. It embodies what Día de los Muertos is all about. Celebrating life while remembering and honoring those we have lost. 

Today we arrived at the event as a class and got to observer other altars/ofrendas as well as show our altar to other guests at the event. It was interesting to the see the various ways in which other group chose to interpret the theme, “honoring those who built bridges, not walls” as well as the celebration of dia de los muertos as a whole. As a group we got to interview many people and one person that stood out in particular was Michael Dixon from the Black Panther Party. Michael told us that dia de los muertos to him was a celebration of life and death as well as unity and the coming together of community for the celebration. Michael is also and alumni of the UW and helped create OMAD and stressed the importance of resistance and passing down resiliency through generations.

While walking around the event, I ended up talking with a woman named Victoria for a little while. She had helped build an altar with the Beacon Hills Arts Program. In the altar there were pictures of all the people in Beacon Hills that were killed by police officers in 2017. There was also a baby carriage and rocking horse by the front that she said was there for when the children walked by to see the altars. After, I went downstairs where the vendors were selling posters and clothing and such. Many of the posters had a powerful message about life and resistance. Through the door was an area where children were dancing with skull faces painted on. Here they were passing out bread and Mexican hot chocolate to dip it in. Overall, I had a great time and feel like I’ve learned more about Latinx culture. 

On October 31st our group arrived at El Centro de la Raza and set up our mini altar. Our theme was centered around honoring and remembering the lives of transgender people who lost their lives to violence in 2017. Altar making has historically given the “others”/marginalized members of society the opportunity to have their voices and existences both seen and heard and our group saw this as the perfect opportunity to honor trans lives. Trans people defy social norms and exist in resistance to normative society and so we used altar making and creativity to also defy these norms. A picture of Marsha P. Johnson, a leader in the gay/trans rights movement, was the center of our altar and we also included pictures and names of the 23 trans people who lost their lives this year.

Before coming to El Centro, I expected the event to be quiet with people standing by the altars they had built. Instead when I got here, people were moving up and down the hallway to look at the altars, people were introducing themselves to one another, and they were talking to each other throughout the event. The atmosphere was friendly and open, people were celebrating their loved ones and causes that they cared about. One of the altars was about the air traffic over Beacon Hill. It had a note that was praying for peace and quiet. In the note, it talked about how the planes flying overhead has taken away sleep and the ability to focus. I was talking to a woman here about it and she said that the planes fly over almost every 3 minutes, so there really isn’t any peace. The altar had a graph of all the lines a plane from SeaTac flies over every day and how many times it went over Beacon Hill specifically. There were so many lines blended together that it looked like a solid color. 

There are lots of different people here looking at all the different altares. It’s interesting to see everyone’s interpretation of this year’s theme: those who build bridges not walls. There are calls for social justice and action for a range of issues. Some are LGBTQ+ equality, deportation, military service, community issues, and many more. My favorite interpretation of the theme was the Amnesty International altar. Amnesty International aims to build bridges across different nations, and stands in solidarity with those who are being oppressed. By honoring some of the people who have died in other countries, we build a bridge between the past and the present, and use their stories to continue fighting for justice.