On the kind of a Sunday that Downeyites have come to expect, blue skies and constant sunshine, the Dia de Los Muertos was celebrated on November first with a virtual website fiesta.

Remembering the excited throngs of families with children in costumes and painted faces roaming the open expanse between City Hall and the plaza in front of the Downy Theatre, the visitor to the website was greeted with the trumpet flourishes of the Mariachi Divas. But not in person – as captured in videos.

The Downey Theatre sponsored all this as a virtual Feast and Fiesta, with a full menu of events. As with all fairs and fetes, it was hard to choose which ones to see. Amber Vogel and her staff, without a budget and with no sponsors, pulled off a spectacular day.

Dia de los Muertos, a holiday from southern Mexico, is more of a cultural holiday than a religious one. To understand this, first and most was the Avenue of Altars, built by families to invite their dead to come back and enjoy the favorite foods, with their families. Through art, cooking, music, building ofrendas, or altars, and doing activities with children, a person’s life, not their death, is remembered.

As Carolina del Toro said at the 2018 fiesta, the altars are the most important feature in a Dia de los Muertos celebration. The altars that Carolina curated for the Downey Arts Coalition were nestled in the green space in front of City Hall. Carolina, who was born in Nyarit on Mexico’s west coast, said, “Altars are created to show the souls of the dead that they haven't been forgotten, by displaying many of the good things the loved one liked while she or he was alive.”

Death in Mexican culture is portrayed as a part of life, not to be feared as in some cultures, not prettified as in others. Many families spend up to two month’s earnings on the food and decorations for their ofrendas. The entire family will work together in the decoration much the same as other Norte Americans decorate a Christmas tree together.

Bottles of soda, stacks of handmade tortillas and pan de Muertos, special turkey in mole sauce, nuts, tamales, and special personal items of the muerto adorn the altar, to induce them to return. According to “How To Build an Altar,” in Southern Mexico, several things are a must: an arch made of sugar cane, candles, copal incense, a glass of water for the weary traveling spirit, flowers ~ especially orange marigolds (cempasuchil) and red cockscomb ~ and special foods like tamales and mole, skeleton decorations and sugar skulls.

For centuries in Mexico, Catholic and pagan rites have shared one characteristic, skulls, or cavalos.  Mounds of these colorful sugar skulls are sold by Indian vendors in open air village markets during the week preceding the holiday.  

Artist Diego Marcial Rios gave a workshop on the art of making sugar skull and decorating them. Labor intensive and made in very small batches in the homes, sugar skulls are sometimes eaten, but their main function is to adorn the altars for the visiting spirits.

Perhaps the most unsettling to a gringa, an outsider, these sugar skulls are a traditional folk art from Southern Mexico. Made with big happy smiles, colorful icing and sparkly tin and glittery adornments, with bejeweled eye sockets, bones dressed in bonnets and tilled sombreros, they parody how the poor saw the rich cavorting, and a reminder that death comes to rich and poor alike. 

Mexico was abundant in sugar production and too poor to buy fancy imported European church decorations, so the friars taught how to make sugar art for religious festivals. Kits selling at $75 show that this is an expensive project, not just ink on S&W cubes. Skulls can be made in plaster too, good for ofrenda builders who must leave their altars outside in cemeteries in variable weather where sugar skulls would be getting moist.

The Arts and Crafts Section link showed how to make papel picado, an art that originated in Mexico. Meaning “punched paper,” the tradition of using papel picado originates from the practices by Aztecs. The Aztecs covered a bark textile called amatl (paper) with melted rubber and paint on it. They used it to decorate religious sculptures, shrines and burials. 

Many traditions were on display but my program was filling up: Classic Car Parades with Los Veternas Car Club de SVG – San Gabriel Valley.  And Folklorico Dancers on the Theatre stage. Dressed in black tights with stark white skeleton bones painted on them performed intricate patterns in frilly costumes and plumed hats.

Recipes in LA Cocina section showed sweet Pan de Muerto, and Mole Negro. Champurrado is a warm thick beverage treat whose ingredients include star anise, a cinnamon stick. a whole clove, 3/4 cup pinole (brown sugar), and 2 tablets Mexican chocolate, heated with milk and stirred well. 

Opening at Stay Gallery in downtown Downey, “Ofrendos” features a live collection of works by  Los Angeles County-based artists. Director Gabriel Enamerado curated this exhibition “to honor the lives of loved ones who have passed and celebrate the unifying gifts of love, connection and remembrance.” Art works are for sale, and can be viewed, as well as artist information, by clicking on works at the online site. November 1 and on display until December 31. 

A pop-up encounter, The Casa Calaveras Experience looked tempting: a colorful series of dioramas that “uncover the heart-filled tale of the happy skeleton couple, José and Gloria” described as “a great way to introduce kids to Día de Muertos .” It involves a small group of artists of disciplines including architecture, sculpture, painting, narrative writing, and costuming.

For armchair viewers wanting to contemplate the theme, the Festival offered a 1960 classic feature, Macario, from the Mexican Golden Age of Cinema. In dramatic black and white, this Oscar nominee tells the parable of a poor and hungry woodcutter whose desperate whim is to eat a whole turkey all by himself.  The wish comes true- but with a provision.  He is visited by the Devil and by God, but he refuses to give a leg or a wing to either.  But when Death comes, Macario instantly takes his machete and cleaves the turkey in two.  

After they have shared a meal, Macario tells Death he broke his resolve to eat it all by himself because, as he tells Death, “I know when you come, you take someone right away.  I thought if we shared you would wait at least till I finished my portion too.”

Because Macario has made Death laugh, he grants the woodcutter a gourd filled with water that can heal the sick – but only if he, Death appears at the sickbed and agrees that this will not go against “The Supreme Order.” As in Geek myth, not even Death . God or the Devil can change the decisions of the independent Fates.

Macario grows so rich with his gift that his children get lost in their big new house.  In trouble when the dread Inqusition comes to destroy him, although he is innocent of being charlatan or a sorcerer, Macario flees to the forest where he meets the three tempters again, lastly Death whom he now calls amigo. He is found by his wife, dead, in his original peasant clothes, with a turkey leg, this time uneaten, in his hand.  Make of that what you will.

For hours on end at this virtual Fiesta of spices and flowers, mariachi music, bright colors and laces, I forgot about the coming impending election, the economy, and the pandemic. I was immersed in a culture that knows how to laugh at Death and honor it at the same time. 

The excitement of sharing a live experience was missing. But in my imagination the Civic Center Plaza was filled with dancing, laughter and food; face painters and glass blowers, vendors selling tamales. 

Chocolates for the children, silver spurs for the men, dangling golden skeleton earrings for the ladies, and marigolds, mescal, and ofrendas for the departed ones. And always, skeleton figurines and sugar skulls to decorate the altars and poke fun at death.