El Día de los Muertos is a Mexican holiday rooted in ancient indigenous ritual and steeped in Catholic custom.  Mexicans celebrate the passing of loved ones on Novemeber 1, honoring the departed souls with elaborate altars containing offerings of food, calaveras, flowers, and other items. In recent years, the holiday has become more widely-recognized in the United States, a change from when my arrived in the United States in the 1960s.  My mother was of a generation whose social and economic survival depended on keen assimilation skills, so we never celebrated the Day of the Dead.  Erecting an altar in our little apartment in the Boulevard Oaks section of Houston was not going to happen. It was only years later, long after I’d moved to D.C. to finish high school that my mother (still in Houston) became an artist of Aztec-inspired paintings and ethereal Day of the Dead altars. … [Read more...]