Des Moines students make an ofrenda for Día de Los Muertos at Capitol View Elementary
Sonia Salas has a small ofrenda, an altar, devoted to her late mother, Andrea Ceceñas, set up in her living room. While the modest display is there all year around, Salas places flowers and bottles of her mother's favorite drinks beside her portrait in the days leading up to Día de los Muertos.
"She loved Carta Blanca beer," Salas said.
For Salas, 41, celebrating Día de Los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is not just about honoring the lives of the dead, but it's an opportunity to share a part of her Mexican culture with others. That includes the students and families at her daughter's school, Capitol View Elementary School.
On Tuesday, Salas volunteered to help students build an ofrenda by the school entrance and bring awareness to the holiday, which is celebrated in Mexico and other parts of Latin America on Nov. 1 and 2.
Capitol View's fifth-grade class and students from East High School's Latinos in Action led the project, decorating the large makeshift altar draped in patterned cloths with marigolds, sugar skulls, a fruit basket and papel picado, or Mexican paper folk art.
Rebecca Sanchez, an English teacher at East and LIA sponsor, said the student-led organization partners with Capitol View for mentoring and tutoring opportunities. Setting up the ofrenda was just one of them.
She said students and families are welcome to add more pictures and write the names of deceased loved ones on paper butterflies taped up behind the ofrenda.
"We're actually doing an ofrenda at East, so we were like that'd be really cool to involve our Capitol View students and teach them the importance of it," Sanchez said.
Apart from working with both groups of students to understand the holiday's history, she said it also opened the door to discuss grief and loss, and that "it's OK to be sad." East High School students have been through a lot this year with a drive-by shooting outside of the school that killed a 15-year-old and injured two teenagers, and a hit-and-run crash that killed a freshman.
That message of grief resonated with high school sophomore and LIA member Dayanara Soriano. Soriano, who is Salvadoran American, said she learned about Día de los Muertos through the film "Coco." Though her family doesn't partake in the holiday's festivities, she reflected about how she has coped with her best friend's death.
"I'm big on taking pictures and taking videos," Soriano, 15, said. "I like just having some time to look back at all the memories we had and honoring her. We still remember her birthday."
"It's just always nice to remember all the memories," she said.
"Obviously there's going to be some sadness," but she said she has learned to "be happy that you got to have that person in your life."
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Shirley Rivera-Pogyl, a junior at East and a LIA member, also recently discovered Día de los Muertos through friends.
"I never grew up really knowing about this," said Rivera-Pogyl, whose family is from Ecuador and the Dominican Republic. The 16-year-old said she has participated in the celebration at school and has thought about placing a photo of her late father on East's ofrenda.
For other students like Abril Salazar, the school's ofrenda reminded her of the one her family has at home. She said the holiday is "really important" to them. The fifth-grader said hers has pictures of her grandfather and uncle, along with sugar skulls and fruits like apples and oranges.
As the nearly half-hour event came to a close and the students dispersed, Salas' daughter, first-grader Alejandra Salas, emerged from one of the hallways. The school bell signifying the end of the day had rung.
Alejandra grabbed a marker from the pile of art supplies near the ofrenda, and with her mother's help, she wrote her grandmother's first name, Andrea, on a wing of a paper butterfly. On the other side, she drew a five-petal flower.
F. Amanda Tugade covers social justice issues for the Des Moines Register. Email her at ftugade@dmreg.com or follow her on Twitter @writefelissa.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Des Moines East, Capitol View students make Day of the Dead ofrenda
