Students celebrate colorful Mexican holiday
(BROWN MIDDLE SCHOOL – Nov. 5, 2018) – Altares, folklorico dancers and even mariachi singers set the tone for the annual Día de los Muertoscelebrations last week at several schools throughout the El Paso Independent School District.
At Brown Middle School, students built homages to their relatives and loved ones. Dual-language students at Green Elementary ate the traditional pan de muerto(bread of the dead) and wrote essays about their experiences.
Bowie High School had one of the largest Day of the Dead celebrations with music and fun. And at El Paso High School, their annual Día de los Muertos festival received a famous visitor: actor Wilmer Balderrama.
“This colorful Mexican holiday has been a tradition for many in El Paso for centuries, and it has become more popular recently with the release of films like Coco,” said Superintendent Juan E. Cabrera. “In a bi-cultural and bilingual community like ours, it’s important to keep these traditions alive. I’m glad our students are enjoying these celebrations.”
Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a holiday in which families build altares (offerings) with their long-gone loved ones favorite foods, drinks and things in order to lure them back to the living world for a quick annual visit. Many in Mexico also visit grave sites to clean, decorate and celebrate the lives of those who have died.
At Brown, the celebration gave students and their families a chance to remember their loved ones who passed with alters. Parents and students also got into the spirit by dressing as catrinasand painting their faces in the shape of skulls.
Pan de muerto and pan dulce added to the celebration. The main two alteres celebrated the lives of artists Frida Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera. Mama Coco, the famous great grandmother from Disney’s 2017 blockbuster movie also made an appearance at the top of one of the alteres.
Folklorico dancer Raul Alvarez spent Thursday remembering his great grandmother.
“If we don’t remember them we could never be with them again their never with our soul,” the sixth grader said. “That’s why we’re supposed to remember them so they can be with us and we can be with them.”
Teacher Hazel Rollins dressed in black, a veil covering her face, said her students embraced the cultural experience and enjoyed paying tribute to their loved ones. It also gave her a chance to reflect about how she felt as a child when her grandmother died.
“I remember coming to school and just feeling pretty depressed about my grandmother dying,” she said. “If I would've had something like this at school and I’d able to bring pictures of my grandmother, I'd be like, ‘hey grandma, guess what? I know you're with us.’ This is just something special. I think it just eases the pain a little bit better.”
Photos by Leonel Monroy