Davis families and students gather to honor the dead and preserve the history and traditions of this holiday for future generations
By MATTHEW MCELDOWNEY — city@theaggie.org
For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, the Davis Cemetery District & Arboretum hosted a Dia de los Muertos celebration on Nov. 2 with prominent local Chicanx artists, vendors, performers and customs essential to this Mesoamerican holiday.
This family-friendly, free-for-all event provided an “Ofrenda,” an altar decorated with marigolds, papel picado, food and candles, for Davis families to honor their deceased loved ones. These Davis families were provided with offerings, grave cleaning supplies and face paint to authentically pay tribute to the departed.
Jessica Smithers, the district superintendent of the Davis Cemetery District & Arboretum, helped set up the event and coordinated cemetery staff to help make this event a reality. Smithers said that it was encouraging to see the turnout of people celebrating this holiday at the cemetery.
“It is really important to us to not just use this space for those that have passed but also for the living,” Smithers said.
For this reason, the Davis Cemetery invited Folklorico Latino de Woodland, Davis’ local Mariachi del Valle, and prominent Chicanx artists to perform and express their culture through art. Francisco Franco, an artist and professor from San Francisco, and ROB-O, a sugar skull artist, conveyed the significance of their heritage and the Dia de los Muertos holiday through the art they showcased.
In addition to these artists, Smithers expressed the importance of inviting educational speakers. Sheila Allen, the District 4 supervisor, stressed the importance of Dia de los Muertos and its history of cultural perseverance which is inseparable from its identity.
“The reason why we really focus on having educational speakers is because of how some may believe that it is just like celebrating Halloween and may not understand that there is a cultural history and tradition to honoring those who have passed,” Smithers said. “It was important to us to have people understand what exactly is happening during this holiday and why it is celebrated today in the United States.”
Zaid Arroyos, a UC Davis alum and intern for the Yolo County Board of Supervisors, reached out to the artists, speakers and local businesses as an organizer for this event. Among these speakers was Professor Kevin Johnson who was selected to talk about cultural preservation.
“It is important to have these events because Davis and the rest of Yolo County have a large Latino population, and we should be doing more to have these ways to celebrate that culture,” Arroyos said. “Dia de los Muertos is especially important for all of us to reconnect with those we have lost.”
This spirit of reconnection in the face of grief best captures the essence of Dia de los Muertos, and it is through this authenticity that this holiday, one of the few remaining Mesoamerican traditions that are prevalent today, can endure, according to Arroyos.
With a focus on cultural appreciation, Arroyos and the staff of Davis Cemetery made an effort to support local businesses and vendors that share or contribute to this heritage.
One such vendor was Ailani Corona-Miramontes, a third-year design major, who sold crochets of marigolds and stuffed animals at the crafts corner of the event.
Corona-Miramontes started her small business, @artsy_ailani on Instagram, in 2018 to make sustainable candles before transitioning into crochet crafts relatively recently. As a vendor for other events such as SoCo Market in Santa Rosa, Corona-Miramontes had learned about this Dia de los Muertos event through the craft community in Davis.
“This was more of a smaller event than others that I have done, but it made up for it by the ways I was able to connect with the community,” Corona-Miramontes said. “I was able to meet people and actually get to know them and interact with them on a personal level, which as a vendor, I love doing.”
As it is her first year as a transfer, Corona-Miramontes felt the hardest part was the transition into student life. However, thanks to events like these that recruit students and vendors from the local craft community, she felt that she was able to meet a lot of like-minded people. For Corona-Miramontes’ first event in Davis, she felt welcomed as the community was there to share about other events, trade their merchandise or simply talk about their creative passions.
Aspiring to run her own business that incorporates her creative passions after college, Corona-Miramontes stressed the importance of engaging with the community as a student.
“As a UC Davis student, there’s more than just our studies,” Corona-Miramontes said. “There’s also our responsibilities past our education, and one of the things that I took away from my design courses is how do we build a society that is sustainable and inclusive for people. And the only way to do that is if you go out into the community and understand your community.”
Written by: Matthew Mceldowney — city@theaggie.org
