Photo by Craig FritzTribune

Tribune

Felicia Hernandez, 17, with New Futures School, works on decorating a skull at the National Hispanic Cultural Center for Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead.

Photo by Craig FritzTribune

Tribune

Sugar skulls sit at a Día de los Muertos altar. The skulls were made by students of New Futures at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.

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Grinning skeletons dressed in colorful clothing and placed in elaborate scenes are cut into delicate tissue paper. Sugar skulls, flowers and food are placed carefully around the photographs of loved ones.

It's that time of year again - Día de los Muertos. The Central American holiday Nov. 1 and 2 is, to outsiders, a combination of the bone chilling and the beautiful.

But to those who know its intimate traditions, it is a time of joy and celebration. It is a time to remember loved ones, whose souls are allowed to return home for a precious 24 hours, it is believed.

Artists Catalina Delgado Trunk, Christopher Gibson and Arturo Olivas - collectively known as Los Cacahuates - have been working closely with the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque to organize Día de los Muertos celebrations and educate the public through various activities.

Los Cacahuates have been collaborating together for seven years and have been involved with the cultural center's events since their inception.

Trunk also gives lectures to the visiting schools about the historical background of Día de los Muertos going back to before the arrival of Europeans to the New World. Afterward, students are invited to try their own hand at decorating sugar skulls.

"It's amazing how attentive they are and how they are soaking everything up like sponges," Trunk said. "These teenagers ask very deep questions. So they are thinking about all this and a lot of them are Mexican immigrants or of Mexican-American descent and it's giving them a tremendous sense of pride in their identity."

Indigenous tradition

Día de los Muertos celebrations began with ancient indigenous people of Mexico, who believed that the souls of the dead returned each year to visit with living relatives and celebrate with food, drink and merriment.

When the Spaniards arrived in the 15th century, it became customary to celebrate deceased children on Nov. 1 and deceased adults on Nov. 2. Altars were built, graves were decorated and food and drink, like the traditional pan de muerto, or cake, were made.

Today, students like those in Kristina Gonzales' New Futures High School class, continue those traditions.

Her students are some of the more than 800 students from various Albuquerque schools who are participating in the Hispanic Cultural Center's fifth annual Día de los Muertos events this year.

Gonzales' class worked with three other New Futures classes to build an ofrenda, or altar, for display at the cultural center.

"I've just had a really good response from the students and from the community," Gonzales said. "I think it's a great project for them to work on, and an opportunity for them to display their work publicly."

Gibson said students have told him that Día de los Muertos activities have changed the way they see life and death.

"What we've discovered with children is that it really gives them a means through which they can process their feelings symbolically," Gibson said. "Everybody has dealt with some degree of loss."

About 15 elementary and high schools have built ofrendas, which are on display at the Cultural Center. Most elementary school children create tributes to their grandparents with photographs or remember their pets with bits of dog kibble.

Popularity grows

Shelle Luaces is the education coordinator for the Hispanic Cultural Center. She said Día de los Muertos events have grown significantly in the past few years. The center's family day, where people build ofrendas, has grown from 75 people to more than 1,200.

"There are people from all backgrounds at the family day," Luaces said. "Which is one of the things that Catalina (Trunk) has tried to do is accomplish this idea of bridging cultures."

Yvonne Dominguez, 16, is one of Gonzales' students. She has been building more personalized ofrendas with her family every year since the age of nine. She said her grandmother taught her about the history of Día de los Muertos and how to build the ofrendas to remember her loved ones.

"Sometimes it's hard because it's difficult to remember people that you love that aren't there physically," Dominguez said.

Gonzales also participates in building an ofrenda at the Broadway Cultural Center and visits her young son's class to teach the children about the tradition.

Gonzales said she has occasionally encountered resistance to the teaching of Día de los Muertos by parents who think the holiday has more to do with religion than culture or see the practice as ghoulish.

"I try to explain that it's all symbolic," Gonzales said. "I try to explain that the sugar [skull] is symbolic of the sweetness of life and the temporal nature of life - that it doesn't last forever."

Gonzales said Día de los Muertos is not Halloween, but rather a cultural and artistic expression of remembering the deceased.

This year, New Futures students chose to remember historical icons ranging from Anne Frank to Jose Mart¡. Their ofrenda was built on a table covered with a floral tablecloth. Sugar skulls painted with brightly colored frosting were piled high and paper flowers made a delicate centerpiece. Glass "memory plates" were decorated with the icons' portraits and meaningful quotations.

New Futures student Dorothy Florez, 18, said her family doesn't celebrate Día de los Muertos, but she said learning about it has made her want to pass the tradition on to her own daughter.

"I thought death was the end, but death is just the beginning of a new life," Florez said.