Cultural Event Paper

Matt Altstiel
12/05/05
CHIC 3507

From Mexico to Mequon

Standing by the black, iron wrought gates guarding the tombs inside I thought to myself, ‘what the hell man, sitting outside of a cemetery alone on a Tuesday night, this is pretty pathetic.’ Latino families filtered into the cemetery dressed in colors of varying hues and carrying varying offrendas into the gates. Not being Latino myself, my only experience with Dia De Los Muertos had been in Mexico itself, albeit in the highly gringoized town of San Miguel on Cozumel. There had been a procession of native Cozumelians wearing paper Mache skull masks, drummers furiously pounding away on bongos, and a collection of sun-burned gringo gawkers chuckling at the “local spectacle.”

However, here in Minneapolis Dia De Los Muertos was something real. Here were people, presumably from thousands of miles away who had carried this culture and this tradition with them. Gone was the commercialized pageantry, but instead the deep respect for religion and kin which permeated every part of daily life. Watching a wrinkled little man break off puffy offerings of Pan De Muertos to his grandchildren as they entered the cemetery made me think of my own grandparents and family. I had only visited cemeteries for funerals and only remembered seeing people cry and hugging each other for support. But these people seemed happy to be there, happy to spend a night in freezing cold weather in a place reserved for dead people!

I must have looked out of place standing outside those gates because a grinning Latino teenager called out, “Hey ese, you look lost or something?” I looked down at my maroon Minnesota sweatshirt and remembered I was wearing a Sigma Phi Epsilon frat hat. Slightly embarrassed, I explained that I was curious about Dia De Los Muertos and that I was taking a Chicano lit class. The family huddled up in brief conversation, engaged in exclamations and head nodding. They broke the huddle and the teen smiled saying, “Hey carnal, ven con nosotros.”

I felt kind of shady accompanying a family I didn’t even know to a very personal and sacred kind of memorial service. Even so, the warmth of the unexpected invitation and my own curiosity urged me to follow the candle carrying leader in front of me. There were only a few families scattered throughout the cemetery. Most of headstones reflected the generic Nordic names carried by most Minnesotans. The family zigzagged their way through various burial plots and finally stopped in front of a tiny, undistinguished head stone. “Carlos Mendoza: 1910 – 1997 – Esposo, Padre, Amante y Luchador” read the inscription.

At once, the family began taking various items out the bags they were carrying: pictures, food, carpentry tools, toys, and more candles. The assemblage began to take form as the padre lit the candles while the madre arranged the food and pictures. The teenager who had invited me placed the carpentero’s tools on the sides of the ofrenda and laid out a large Minnesota twins blanket on the ground. The little Niña sucked her thumb and held the wooden toys in her other hand. The vieja stood in quiet reverence taking the whole scene in. I stood off to the side, careful to not interrupt anything and tried to observe everything.

One by one each member of the family knelt in front of the headstone, picked up one of the candles nearby and said a prayer to God. Each followed with another prayer to the Saints and to the man they were honoring. The little Niña, too young to remember her abuelo walked around clapping her hands and laughing. The others sat down on the blanket picking up or pointing to various items of the offrenda. For each item there was a story. A rusted hammer: Carlos had used it build the family’s first small house in Yuma, Arizona. A plate of empanadas, huaraches and tortillas chips: the gordo veijo loved to eat. One time, Carlos had entered a chili pepper eating contest forcing the veija to take care of him for a week. The well worn wooden horse the Niña had carried in had its own story: the Mendoza family could not afford store bought toys, so Carlos made them. Laughter and happy conversation celebrated the legacy of the man. Carlos Mendoza was not dead; he came alive each year through the stories and offering. After spending some time with the family, I thanked them for their hospitality and took off.

Walking back to my 98’ Jetta I wondered, ‘Why didn’t my family have this kind of tradition? Why didn’t we embrace and remember the lives of our ancestors at least once a year?’ Thinking about Dia De Los Muertos would be especially poignant this year since one of my good friends had passed away in May.

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During Thanksgiving, some friends and I loaded up my 98 Jetta and headed toward the cemetery. The past seven months without Wittig had not been easy for any of us. Still we remembered, because for us, the Fifa Frat, holding on to memories was much easier than forgetting his life. The six of us walked slowly through the narrow aisles past humble gravestones and huge marble monuments alike. I looked over at my friend CJ, who started to grin and said, “Hey, do you remember when Wittig hung out with the ‘sabertooth’?” We all laughed at the joke that only our friend group would understand. One by one, we each told a funny story about Wittig until we had made it to his grave stone.

The newly installed head stone read, “Matt Wittig 1985-2005”. A short inscription, “To Give Anything Less Than Your All Is to Sacrifice the Gift,” followed. The quote came from Steve Prefontaine, our favorite cross country runner and the man all us idolized in High School. Like Pre, Wittig had passed away before his time, but had died doing what he loved. Perhaps seized by the spirit, my friend Dustin began to talk to Wittig, telling him about the past months. We all joined in, as if Wittig were there, ready to respond and talk back to us. By the time I looked down at my watch nearly an hour had past. We left vowing to return with race jerseys, music cds, and Green Bay Packers gear as soon as the weather got warm.

We all left with a serene calm feeling in our hearts, a feeling I have experienced only a few times in my life. For me, the spirit of Dia De Los Muertos became tangible that day. Death did mark the end of some one’s life; it only marked a change in relationship. The duality present in every portion of life makes sense to me. Dia De Los Muertos for me represents the proper response for dealing with death. There are no absolutes, no fixed immutable truths, but rather, for better or for worse, we all have agency.