Day of the Dead on Campus Gives View of Death as a Part of Life

The professor traveled to Tijuana to buy miniature skulls.

Elvia Ruiz and Lorena Alcala, freshmen at Cal State Dominguez Hills, spent more than 20 hours folding, cutting, and unfolding decorations in green, yellow, orange, pink, red and blue tissue paper.

Jose Guerra, a senior, and Michael Pampa, a freshman, moved furniture out of a tiny office to make way for an altar.

Alma Rosa Alvarez gathered a box full of old Spanish and English magazines, a calculator, eight-track cassette tapes, a small globe--and a basketful of lemons.

Alvarez, the other students and Prof. Miguel Dominguez have spent the last week preparing for Dia de los Muertos , the Mexican Day of the Dead observance that falls on Nov. 2, All Soul’s Day in the Roman Catholic church year.

Dominguez, director of the university’s Mexican-American Studies Program, and his students have turned his office into an exhibition of the traditional ofrenda , the offering to the dead.

The paper decorations, called papel picado, are strung from the ceiling and meet at a central point above the altar, where papier-mache skeletons; candles, flowers; a sampling of tamales, rice, beans, tortillas; sugar skulls and pan de muerto-- bread of the dead--await the spirit of the person to be honored.

A trail of crushed zempaxuchil (marigold) petals will lead the spirit from the doorway to the center of the altar, where a small wood and cane chair has been placed.

This year’s campus ofrenda is intended to honor Rafael Alvarez, Alma Alvarez’s uncle, who died last year. His niece gathered some of his favorite possessions to include in the ofrenda.

He especially loved lemons.

“He was the only person I ever knew who could eat a lemon and not flinch,” his niece recalled, laughing.

The pan de muerto, in shapes of cadavers and bones, will be shared with visitors tonight.

It is all in keeping with the tradition from central and southern Mexico, where Dia de los Muertos blends the Roman Catholic observance of All Souls’ Day with ancient Indian tribal celebrations.

The emphasis is on acceptance of death as part of the natural process of life.

“The Day of the Dead is a holiday in Mexico,” said Martha De Leon, adult coordinator for Spanish religious education at St. Philomena Church in Carson.

After Mass, De Leon noted, there are processions to the cemetery to decorate the graves with wreaths of flowers.

“They serve a meal for themselves and for the dead,” De Leon said. “They bring music because it is not seen as a death, but as a passing to a better life.”

St. Philomena Church is not planning a Day of the Dead celebration, but for the first time will offer an All Souls’ Day Mass in Spanish at 5:30 p.m. today.

Father Luis Valbuena, of Holy Family Church in Wilmington, said the Catholic tradition of remembering and praying for the dead comes from the time of the early Christians, who were forced to bury their dead in the catacombs.

“When the Europeans came to America, they found out that the Indians had the same tradition of respecting and remembering the dead. . . . They Christianized it by teaching that Christ brought new life.”

Dominguez hopes that the ofrenda exhibition will teach visitors something about Mexican culture.

Skulls and skeletons, often draped in serapes and wearing sombreros, figure prominently in ofrendas and sometimes Dia de los Muertos is confused with Halloween.

But the two days are very different.

“The message (of Dia de los Muertos) is that love doesn’t stop at the grave,” Dominguez said. “It continues.

“In Halloween you have the practice of frightening people. . . . The costumes are meant not to attract, but to scare away. . . . The masks are very ghoulish, very intimidating.”

In an ofrenda, children’s names are often written in icing across the forehead of the skulls.

“Skulls are presented very differently. . . . The children are told, ‘This is the symbol of death, but don’t be afraid of it. It’s yours. Play with it and then eat it.’ ”

The professor and his students will be on hand at the office, in Room A-340 of the Humanities and Fine Arts Building, to answer visitors’ questions about the ofrenda throughout the day.

This is the second year that Dominguez has prepared the celebration.

Last year the professor felt it was only proper to honor Don Manuel Dominguez, the 19th-Century master of Rancho San Pedro, the Spanish land grant that comprises most of what is now the South Bay, and the builder of the Dominguez Adobe, headquarters of the rancho.

This year Alvarez, 21, a senior and one of his independent studies students, said preparing for the ofrenda helped ease her sense of loss and reminded her of her uncle’s qualities.

Neither Ruiz nor Alcala had ever prepared an ofrenda, or made papel picado . They said the experience made them think about death, but without fear.

“I don’t feel so bad any more,” Ruiz said. “It’s kind of nice knowing that someone is going to remember you this way.”