El Corazon de la Muerte

"This is an art museum catalogue that starts with a description of some of the pre-Columbian ways that Day of the Dead was observed. Then it gets into the ways it has been observed in California, when Chicanos first began to publicly celebrate the festival in the 1970s. The photos are gorgeous, and the book is written in English and Spanish, so each page allows readers to follow in the language of their choice. The book focuses on altar exhibitions at the Oakland Museum of California. These exhibitions show how the concept of remembering the dead remains strong in US Latino communities, but the ways in which they celebrate are often very different here than in Latin America. I have seen this in my own research. US altar installations are no longer simply “altars” but can be entire exhibition rooms in honor of a certain person or a political cause. Altars in Latin America are traditionally made specifically for deceased family members, but in the US, Chicanos reshaped the altar concept to also honor the “collective ancestors” of the Latino community. You see altars honoring famous people of diverse Latin American national origins, like revolutionary activist, Che Guevara, artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, or salsa singer, Celia Cruz, as a way to celebrate the contributions of Latinos to the wider world. Chicanos also created altars with political messages in honor of people who have died from preventable socio-political causes like inner city gang violence, gendered violence, inhumane work conditions and pesticide poisoning of farm workers. Most US farm workers are Latino immigrants. Day of the Dead altars in the US often raise consciousness about social injustices. In the first edition of my book, I talked a lot about US Day of the Dead altars as a form of political communication. Since then, we’ve seen altars created in memory of George Floyd and other victims of police brutality, #MeToo victims, LGBT people gunned down in mass shootings, immigrant children put in cages and dying on the US/Mexican border, and racial disparities concerning Covid deaths, so I’ve added new developments such as these to the 2022 edition of my book."