mictlan en mi corazón
The story of activist and cultural organizer, Yolanda Zavala, is a portal that takes us deep into a community that’s organizing through Danza Azteca (traditional Mexican Aztec dance) to honor their ancestors and preserve their culture and traditions for future generations in the face of harsh immigration enforcement and the pressure of assimilation and economic injustice.
La historia de la activista y organizadora cultural, Yolanda Zavála, es un portal que nos adentra en una comunidad que se está organizando a través de la Danza Azteca para honrar a sus antepasados y preservar su cultura y tradiciones para las generaciones futuras frente a la dura aplicación de la ley de inmigración y la presión de la asimilación y la injusticia económica.
trailer
Roots Run Deep at Day of the Dead Festival in Durham, NC
By Emily Rhyne
Durham, NC. November 28, 2023
It was October in North Carolina. Leaves were beginning to color and crisp, and the nights were getting longer and colder. Yolanda Zavala sat at her kitchen table as dusk settled in, making phone calls in what felt like an endless string of conversations to cement the final details for the annual Day of the Dead event she’s organized for 13 years.
Facing the window, she observed her grandchildren outside, chasing each other amid a tangle of screams and giggles. Inside her one-year-old great-granddaughter gurgled on the couch as Disney’s popular Day of the Dead themed movie “Coco” played on the television. She had strategically placed her “office” to keep a watchful eye on the busy neighborhood, a small trailer park in rural Wendell, where her three daughters and dozens of grandchildren have built their lives together.
Every year, North Carolina sees an increasing number of Day of the Dead festivals across the state in both rural areas and city centers. Day of the Dead, or Dia de Muertos, takes place on November 2 and serves as a special opportunity to remember loved ones who have passed away. It is also a time to honor and remember the traditions passed down from ancestors to future generations.
For immigrants building their lives thousands of miles away from their ancestral home, Day of the Dead serves as an important connection between generations past and the generations to come.
“I’m so proud of my culture, I just want to share it with everyone. I want everyone to see it,” Zavala said.
But Zavala went on to say that she has a special passion for teaching her cultural traditions to Mexican-American youth, children of immigrant families, so that they can be proud of who they are and where they come from.
Zavala founded the festival in Durham, NC, 13 years ago after the death of her sister. When her sister passed away in Mexico, Zavala was in the U.S., unable to travel due to her irregular immigration status at that time. Far away and unable to be with her family to grieve, Zavala could not find closure. Her sister’s birthday was on November 2, so every year, on the Day of the Dead, she was inconsolable with persistent thoughts of her sister.
Zavala decided she had to do something to transform the pain into something positive. So she organized a small Day of the Dead festival in memory of her sister. What began as a small two-hour festival with a few dozen people, has now grown into two days with hundreds of participants.
Many consider Zavala to be the “mother” of Aztec Dance in North Carolina. A dancer herself, she has spent decades organizing community around traditional dances from various regions of Mexico. She raises money for children who want to dance but whose families can’t afford to buy the expensive regalia. She coordinates gatherings and connects aspiring dancers to groups in their areas. At each gathering of dancers, she is the respected elder who opens the space with sacred incense.
The Day of the Dead gathering she organizes is the fruit of that labor. Dance groups come from all across North Carolina and have traveled from as far as Texas, Georgia and Tennessee to attend. When the event opens on the evening of November 1, as many as 80 dancers and drummers join together in a powerful display to welcome their ancestors, whose spirits are believed to visit their loved ones on November 1 and 2.
Families spend days collecting all the components for elaborate altars or offerings (ofrendas) for this annual visit from their deceased loved ones. They cook the deceased’s favorite dishes and include their favorite snacks and drinks, along with water, flowers, candles and incense. Their portraits are displayed prominently among the sacred items and cempasúchil (marigold) flowers. The name, meaning “flower of 20 petals,” originates from the indigenous Nahuatl language of Mexico. Its distinctive smell and color are thought to guide ancestors to the ofrendas (offerings) left for them by family members on this special day.
At the Avila Center in Durham, which has been the home of the festival for the last 2 years, participants arrive early on the morning of November 1 to begin building their altars on the rolling, grassy lawn of the 50-acre nonprofit retreat center. Some altars are devoted to family members, others to themes. A small group of LGBTQIA+ activists built an altar dedicated to victims of hate crimes and suicide in the Queer community. Students from Elon University built an altar dedicated to migrants who have died in the desert, attempting to cross the border. Several Aztec dance groups built altars, collectively commemorating their loved ones. By 5 pm, when the festival opened to the public, over a dozen large altars stood in an oblong ring around the perimeter of the field, their candles glowing in blue twilight.
Jesús Gómez, a master artisan from Hidalgo, Mexico, spent months building two catrines, measuring 14 feet tall, especially for this year’s festival.
Catrinas, skeletons characters with toothy grins and brightly decorated skulls, were first made popular by Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada in the early 1900s and have since become one of the most widely recognized imagery associated with Mexico’s Day of the Dead traditions.
Stretching between Gómez’s towering colorful statues was the festival’s arched entrance, decorated with cempasúchil flowers and calaveras (skulls). The flowers spelled the word Mictlán, the name of the underworld in Nahuatl, one of Mexico’s many indigenous languages.
Gregorio Morales, a volunteer who builds the arch each year, explains the importance of the arch and why he and his family spend weeks preparing it:
“It’s a gateway. A threshold to a different dimension. It gives you a feeling of arriving to a special place. If you hope to enter a different dimension, you need either a different state of mind or a special entrance.”
There’s a sense of magic reaching the other side of the arch, arriving to a place where our most beloved ancestors come back to visit. Many stay up late into the night drinking coffee and sitting with their altar for the opportunity to convene with loved ones they’ve lost.
Near the festival grounds at the Avila Center lies a children’s cemetery. Annually, Yolanda organizes a group of volunteers to clean the cemetery and paint the small wooden crosses at each grave. This year, volunteers from the Danza Guerreros Quetzalcoatl decorated the tombs with toys and butterflies in remembrance of the children.
Yolanda hopes these traditions will be continued by future generations in the U.S., passionately instilling their significance in her children and grandchildren. Her work is paying off as the new generation comes into the fold.
As Yolanda’s 16-year-old granddaughter, Carolina Espinoza, explains,
“I dance for my grandmother. So that the traditions she’s taught us live on for future generations after she’s gone.”
