Day of the dead

Saturday, Oct. 28, 2000 | 10:06 a.m.

Exhibits

The Hispanic Museum of Nevada has a Los Dias de los Muertos exhibit at the Rafael Rivera Community Center, 2900 Stewart Ave. Call 229-4600.

The Lied Discovery Children's Museum, 833 Las Vegas Blvd. North, has a Los Dias de los Muertos exhibit on display through November. The museum is also offering workshops on Days of the Dead puppets, traditional weavings and bread. Dance troupe Mexico Vivo! performs at 2 p.m. today. Call 382-3445.

In the kitchen of La Espiga de Oro, a Hispanic bakery on Las Vegas Boulevard, Martin Martinez sprinkles colored sugar onto the round loaves of sweet bread.

Orders are already being taken for the symbolic bread made only at this time of year.

Known as pan de los muertos -- "the bread of the dead" -- it is placed on homemade altars during "Los Dias de los Muertos" -- the Days of the Dead -- a traditional Mexican and Latin American holiday that celebrates the cycle of life and honors the dead.

The holiday, celebrated Nov. 1 and 2, is one of the busiest bread-making holidays for Yolanda and Agustin Galvez, owners of La Espiga de Oro.

"Last November, people came like crazy for the bread," Yolanda Galvez said. Nearly 300 orders were placed for the bread in the shape of people or round with knobs on top, she said. More orders are expected this year with continued growth of the area's Hispanic population.

"The kids who come from Mexico know why they celebrate," Galvez said. "Many older people try to keep the culture, but some of the kids who grow up here don't always pay attention to tradition."

Come Wednesday, those who celebrate the holiday will create "ofrendas" -- offerings -- adorned with marigolds, candles and photographs of deceased relatives. Miniature skulls will be set alongside foods that their relatives loved.

Families build such offerings in hopes of being reunited with deceased friends and relatives. Some place food outside their front doors to feed the hungry souls traveling home.

"The idea is that they are coming back to celebrate the earthly pleasures," said Emily Newberry, public relations director of the Lied Discovery Children's Museum, where a Los Dias de los Muertos exhibit is on display. "Usually you have a glass of water for them to drink and other mementos that you associate with them."

The holiday has a complex history that stems from Aztec festivities dedicated to the dead. When the Spanish conquered Mexico, the Aztec tradition was fused with Roman Catholic beliefs and is celebrated at the time of All Saint's Day and All Soul's Day.

Every region has a different way of celebrating, according to Irma Wynants, assistant folk art coordinator for Clark County. "In Michoachan, Mexico, families spend the entire night in the cemetery, praying, burning candles and singing religious songs."

In other areas of Mexico, people dress as ghouls, ghosts and dancing skeletons and parade through the streets carrying open coffins -- usually with a person inside dressed as a smiling corpse. Families accompanied by Mariachis go to cemeteries to clean the graves.

Businesses, homes and restaurants are decorated with handmade skeletons that mimic daily life, such as Mariachi bands and brides and grooms -- each reinforcing the message of a person's ultimate destiny. Piles of calaveras de dulce -- skulls made of sugar -- are stacked in Mexican markets and bread of the dead is made.

As a child growing up in Zacatecas, a mining town in Mexico, Wynants remembers the holiday clearly. Candies in the shape of bones were sold after Mass, and large markets would sell toys and sugar skulls for Los Dias de los Muertos, she said.

Wynants and her friends would celebrate by dressing one child as a dead person whom the others would carry from home to home as the group asked for fruit. Another child, dressed in Wynants' mother's black coat, would dramatically portray the grieving widow.

"We were the best actors," she said. "It was a lot of fun."

The holiday isn't only for Hispanics. Others, such as Newberry, who isn't Catholic or Hispanic, has picked up the tradition and celebrates by building an ofrenda every year. She shares the tradition with her son and mother. Friends also contribute memorabilia.

"In the sweetest of possible ways it gives us an avenue to talk about people in a way that our culture doesn't," Newberry said. "You can learn all sorts of things from other cultures, and I think this is a great illustration of that.

"I'd (also) like to believe at some point or another you can come back and enjoy the world," she said.

In the United States, Halloween overshadows Los Dias de los Muertos, Wynants said, adding that Halloween has even taken precedence in some parts of Mexico.

At first glance, many confuse the display at the Lied museum with Halloween, A.J. Rhodes, director of education at the museum, said.

The holidays may share similar symbolism, but "Halloween is about 'now,' about trick-or-treating, scaring," she said. "(Los Dias de los Muertos) is a whole different dimension."

The holiday teaches that death is part of a cycle, she said. "This is something that's going to happen and to not be frightened of it."

To enforce this, children's names are written on the foreheads of the sugar skulls that are placed on the ofrendas alongside the saints.

"It's a way of having your presence there," Rhodes said. "This is the most extended kind of family reunion you can have."