Altar Ego

By JOSE CARDENAS

Oct. 31, 1997 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The holiday is the Mexican Dia de los Muertos--Day of the Dead--but the observance has a definite L.A. accent.

In Studio City, a group of women attending an art workshop learn how to decorate the traditional sugar skulls that evoke the memories of the departed. Beth Sax takes a skull and carefully writes “P. Diana” for the late princess.

In a Venice gallery, artist Rigo Maldonado lights the candles at a Day of the Dead altar covered with traditional Mexican altar elements, bright marigolds and the Virgin Mary among them.

But the altar’s centerpiece is a silhouette with a modern American political message: a father, mother and a small girl holding hands running--images meant to honor immigrants killed in the trek north.

Maldonado, a UCLA student, and Sax, who works promoting art, embody the American transformation of Dia de los Muertos, a quintessential Mexican holiday with roots in Aztec culture.

Just as Halloween has made inroads into Mexican culture--to the alarm of many Mexicans--the Day of the Dead is becoming more widely observed north of the border, but in a uniquely American way.

Non-Latinos, as well as Mexican Americans, are decorating sugar skulls and erecting altars. They’re even honoring deceased pets.

And yes, there’s also a web site altar that can be visited via computer.

“That’s the way America takes culture,” said Tomas Benitez, director of Self Help Graphics and Art Inc. in East Los Angeles, which has displayed Day of the Dead works over the years. “Chicanos have adopted it here. We have maintained its integrity but given it the American twist.”

“The reason it’s becoming more popular is because the U.S. doesn’t have an equivalent holiday,” said Angela Villalba, 38, who owns the Reign Trading Co. in Studio City, where Sax participated in the workshop.

Last year about 10 people came to one class. This year, close to 150 paid $35 each to attend sessions where they ate a dinner of tamales--vegetarian or meat-filled--watched a video about the holiday and decorated sugar skulls.

The origins of the Day of the Dead stretch back to folklore practices of central Mexico about 2,000 years ago, said Miguel Dominguez, a professor of Spanish at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

By the 16th century, the Aztecs had long believed death was the permanent human state and should not be feared. A person’s life was merely a temporary dream. They observed the holiday around the same time the Catholic Church observed All Souls Day--so when Spanish conqueror Hernando Cortes arrived in 1519, the holidays merged.

Today, in the states of Michoacan and Oaxaca, the holiday is a happy yet spiritual time. To mock death, people give one another sugar skulls bearing the recipients’ names.

And to entice the spirits, families adorn altars with fresh fruits, the deceased’s favorite foods and drinks and a specially baked bread known as pan de muertos--bread for the dead. In the night they go to the cemeteries to await the spirits: According to tradition, the souls of children descend the first night, Nov. 1, and adults come the second.

“We Mexicans are very sentimental,” said artist Joel Garcia, 41, recently as he worked in a Pasadena studio he visits to make Day of the Dead art he sells here. “Here . . . children even go to another state to go to college. We want to be close to our family even when they’re dead.”

In the United States, assimilation had nearly erased the holiday from Mexican American culture until the Chicano movement of the 1960s, Dominguez said. “In many ways, Americanization was de-Mexicanization. We realized we were getting rid of something that was very beautiful.”

The renewed interest was chiefly among artists who popularized it with displays and processions at galleries and public places.

“It’s been the artists that have brought the holiday out to the larger community,” said Olivia Armas, the archivist at Galeria De La Raza in San Francisco’s Mission District, which began celebrations in the early 1970s.

Conveying the spirituality of the day was not easy.

In 1992, the gallery canceled a yearly procession that had grown to about 10,000 participants of all races, partly because it was too big for the gallery to finance. Also, many participants, dressed in costumes, did not seem to differentiate Dia de los Muertos from Halloween.

“It’s unfortunate that other people have missed the point,” Armas said.

The procession did show one American spin on the Day of the Dead. In Mexico, it is a private time, a time for family. In the United States, it’s becoming very public.

And in Los Angeles this weekend, various altars and public celebrations can be found, from the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach to The Folk Tree in Pasadena.

Maldonado, 24, said his altar, on display at the Social and Public Art Resource Center, is a reaction to the passage of Propositions 187 and 209--the anti-illegal immigration and affirmative action measures.

At Self Help Graphics, one altar is for immigrants who have died in industrial accidents this year in Los Angeles--two in the Metro Rail project. Marta Segura-Chirino, 33, coordinating the altar, is the program manager for the Health and Safety Training Project at UCLA.

“Most of our parents are immigrants and in this society they are not given credit for their contributions,” she said.

One of the people honored would be her mother, Olivia, a cannery worker who died last year at age 67 after a heart attack. The workers who died in the Metro Rail tunnel project are Ismael Montes and Jaime Pasillas.

In the spirit of activism, community members would be encouraged to visit the altar and hear union representatives speak, Segura-Chirino said.

“Altars need to be community based, on a topic that everyone understands,” said Reina Prado, exhibition coordinator at the Venice gallery where Maldonado installed his altar.

Those who are embracing Day of the Dead say it provides a spiritual element often missing from mainstream American culture.

“In America, when someone dies, we want to pretend it didn’t happen,” said artist Malcolm McDonald, 39, of Pasadena, who built an altar for his father 11 years after he died of smoking-related cancer at age 65. “They start to drift away from your mind. What my father gave to me is something I don’t want to lose.”

For Sax, the workshop on the Day of the Dead revealed a culture she never knew--and revealed something about her family as well.

“I learned a lot about my grandparents, putting the altar together,” said Sax, 35, arranging marigolds at the altar she built with her twin sister, Amy, in her Studio City apartment. “It was a good chance to call my dad and say, ‘Hey, dad, what did grandpa like?’ ”

She left on the altar a beer bottle and cigarettes in front of a sugar skull representing grandfather Leon Sax, who was an alcoholic.

The holiday has also been adopted by some teachers, mostly at private schools, as a tool to teach children about culture and to encourage them to draw personal lessons.

At Westland School in Los Angeles, 10-year-old Nichole Lorentz of Woodland Hills was one of several children who made decorations for a giant altar.

“It’s not like Halloween,” she said. “It’s not trying to scare you. It’s remembering the people that died, like your family.”

At New Roads School in Santa Monica, sixth- through eighth-grade students placed personal items at a classroom altar decorated by teacher Marcie Gilbert with a giant pan de muerto, which the children ate after class.

“This is for my sister who died two weeks ago,” Naomi Leback,14, whispered to the class, laying down a photo of her 19-year-old sister’s baby. She said later, “It helps me feel closer to her.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Dia de los Muertos Celebration

1. Dia de los Muertos Exhibit

Nov. 7

El Centro de Accion Social, Inc.

37 E. Del Mar Blvd.

Pasadena

2. Fourth annual Dia de los Muertos

Sunday

CultuAztlan and the San Fernando Valley Latino Arts Council

10940 Sepulveda Blvd.

Mission Hills