DÍA DE MUERTOS
Conceived by Maestra Celia Herrera Rodríguez
Our annual Día de Muertos / Day of the Dead Vigil and Ofrendas honors and celebrates the lives of our ancestors and lost loved ones through this time-honored tradition.
Vigil and Community Altar in honor of "water protectors" who have lost their lives in defense of their territories, waters, and the Earth.
animArte Workshops
Día de Muertos - ¡Ánimas que vuelvan! payed tribute to and remembers the numerous individuals who in the past two years have died from COVID-19. As we were able to gather, LMC wanted to offer a space and ways to heal from the tremendous loss of life and support the revitalization of their ánima (soul/energy). For this reason, in preparation for our annual Día de Muertos, Las Maestras Center brought together arts, culture and ceremony in a series of “animArte” workshops, altar building and a vigil as a collective act to support our communities as we worked to reconnect ourselves, our spirit and one another. We collaborated with local artists, Chicana/o Studies undergraduate students and local K-12 schools to learn about Día de Muertos and how to build an altar by making some of its essential elements, like papel picado and calaveritas de azúcar and calaveritas literarias.
animArte Workshops
The Community Arts Workshop
631 Garden Street, Santa Barbara
🌼 Papel Picado Workshop with our in house LMC artist, John Jairo Valencia, on Sunday, October 16th from 11AM-2PM
🌼 Calaveritas de Azúcar Workshop with community artist Dora Pérez, on Sunday, October 23rd from 3-6PM
🌼 Altar Building from October 29 - November 1st, a space for community organizations to work alongside each other in preparation for el Día de muertos.
🌼 Vigil and Ofrendas, November 1st from 5pm-midnight
Voz, Vela y Voto
Las Maestras Center presented short solo commentaries, dialogues, ritual moments, and arts offerings by folks from various sectors of our communities.
Together, we counted down the days until Día de Muertos and the national election 2020 in the effort to raise awareness and collective courage preparing ourselves for whatever the outcome.
Día de Muertos 2020 brought us together in “Voz, Vela, y Voto / Palabra, Prayer and Política”, with a return to the everyday work of organizing in our communities. We moved our voz/voice into action and we focused our prayer, that our collective voz ignite the political conciencia of our communities.
EnVocAcción
Maestra Celia Herrera formed a group of artists/writers/organizers, community, spiritual, and cultural activists: Beva Sanchez Padilla, Southwest Organizing Project, Albuquerque, NM: David Zamora Casas, Visual Artist, San Antonio, TX; Iuri Morales Lara, Poet/Educator, Santa Ana, CA; Ymoat Luna, organizer and cultural activist Mesa Resistance, San Diego, CA; and Luzma Espinosa, Poet Laureate at Ventura County, Santa Paula, CA.
