The message is announced with rows of yellow marigolds, flapping crepe-paper banners, smiling photographs and personal artifacts enjoyed by the deceased in the best of times. Not with prayer cards, rosaries or copies of eulogies.
The Mexican holiday, Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead that coincides with All Souls Day has taken over Gloria Molina Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles through Thursday, Nov. 2. The event remembers those who’ve passed with 20 decorated altars — or ofrendas — to life, not death; celebration, not mourning; and hope overcoming despair — scattered in the 12-acre park at 200 N. Grand Ave.
“I don’t think of it as a time where people are mournful or sad,” said Julian Smalley, a transplant from England, viewing the altars on a sunny Oct. 30. “I see it as a celebration and I like that. That is positive.”
Multimedia artist, activist and exhibit curator, Consuelo G. Flores, who has created altars for more than 12 years, was asked by a first-time altar-maker this year why she doesn’t fall into a heap of crushing sadness doing this job.
“I said to her, it is not easy,” Flores said during an interview on Tuesday, Oct. 31. “You are keeping that person’s memory alive. You are making sure that person is known beyond your personal relationship, plus how that person influenced who you became.”
Sometimes, altar-makers communicate the gifts passed down to the current generation, Flores said. “Like how to be the best mother. Or how to read and write in Spanish. Those are the gifts I am talking about.”
A family altar to Gloria Molina remembered the county supervisor who died at age 74 in May. Molina pushed for the park’s creation, which was transformed from a heap of rusting metal and concrete structures into a civic, green space in 2012. And the trailblazer was the first Latina elected to the California state Assembly, Los Angeles City Council and L.A. County Board of Supervisors. The park was named after her…
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