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鈥淲e all suffer three deaths, and the first death is the day that we die. The second death is the day that we鈥檙e buried, never to be seen on the earth again. And the third, but the most dreaded death of all, is to be forgotten.鈥�鈥擮felia Esparza, artist, recounting her mother鈥檚 words on D铆a de los Muertos

Screenings of the popular Pixar film Coco have become commonplace across the United States during the fall season. Released by Walt Disney Pictures in 2017, Coco follows the adventures of a young Mexican boy named Miguel who finds himself in the Land of the Dead. The film is steeped in the cultural aesthetic of D铆a de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, replete with calaveras, or sugar skulls, and marigold flowers. Today, thanks in no small part to Coco, D铆a de los Muertos is a de facto aspect of Halloween festivities across the United States.

Chicano artists in East Los Angeles helped to popularize the celebration starting in the 1970s, expanding on an Indigenous tradition that had been melded with Catholic observances of All Saints Day and All Souls Day on November 1 and 2. Now, with the mass appeal of D铆a de los Muertos culminating in commercially produced art and a Disney film, observers of the holiday are questioning whether the sought-after visibility has come at a price too steep. 

The Disney-fication of Day of the Dead

Walk into any department store, drug store, or even 99-cent store after August and you鈥檒l find alongside seasonal markers like jack-o鈥�-lanterns and scarecrows,  decorations, figurines, temporary tattoos, coloring books, and other knick-knacks. Halloween costumes of Coco characters are easily available, as well as makeup kits with accompanying instructions for transforming one鈥檚 face into a calavera. 

Even before Coco鈥檚 release, the tradition had started to gain traction across the U.S. and beyond. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not Pixar or Disney鈥檚 fault鈥攖hey鈥檙e not responsible for it,鈥� says , a well-known political cartoonist and writer. Speculating about why D铆a de los Muertos is popular, Alcaraz says, 鈥淚t just has been a general trend because of mass communication, capitalism, and maybe NAFTA,鈥� (because of the cross-border commerce between the U.S. and Mexico via the trade agreement). Disney and Pixar jumped on board a train that was already going full steam ahead. 

Still, there is perhaps no more fitting an example of the attempted commercialization of the tradition than Disney鈥檚 2013 effort to  for the phrase 鈥淒铆a de los Muertos,鈥� which was the original working title of Coco. 鈥淲hen we all found out, all the rabble, all the Raza, we went crazy,鈥� says Alcaraz, who drew a scathing cartoon titled  as part of the campaign to oppose the trademark.  

Alcaraz relates how, 鈥渢he Disney attorneys did not think twice about trademarking a community鈥檚 religious and cultural observance. They thought it was just part of doing business,鈥� he says. 

鈥淚n our country, every tradition, every celebration can become so commercialized that it loses its significance,鈥� worries Ofelia Esparza, an East Los Angeles-based master altar-maker whose cultivation of the art of D铆a de los Muertos earned her a  from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Artists like Alcaraz and Esparza have feared that without their stewardship, companies like Disney and Walmart will appropriate and exploit the tradition of the cultural holiday. Disney, embarrassed by the negative attention over its trademark application, quickly backed off. Eventually the filmmakers at Pixar invited Alcaraz, Esparza, and other Chicano artists to be cultural consultants for Coco to influence the film鈥檚 plotline and visuals. 

A Mash-up of Culture, Religion, and History

鈥淭he origins of this tradition go back thousands of years before the Europeans came in with the Catholic church,鈥� Esparza says. Indigenous communities in Mexico and Central America melded their traditions with those of the Catholic Church. According to Alcaraz they, 鈥渕ixed it together and came up with something new,鈥� creating a 鈥渕ix-master of culture and ingredients.鈥�

Infused into this was the work of the famed Mexican political artist and lithographer , whose art satirized corruption in politics more than a century ago in the form of calacas, or , and who is credited with originating the iconic  imagery. Guadalupe Posada鈥檚 work, according to Alcaraz, 鈥渨as cutting-edge back then鈥� even as it has now become a mainstream aspect of D铆a de los Muertos.

Alongside the skeleton imagery, a hallmark of the festival is the ofrenda, or altar鈥攁 visually arresting display of paper and real flowers, candles, food, water, and, most importantly, images of lost loved ones. The word ofrenda means 鈥渙ffering鈥� in Spanish and each October, artists like Esparza make an offering to their local community during D铆a de los Muertos celebrations.

Read Ofelia Esparza鈥檚 explanation of the essential elements of altar-making.

How Chicano Artists Shaped the Modern-Day Tradition 

Esparza first learned how to make altars from her mother who learned the art of altar-making from earlier generations. Today, the 89-year-old matriarch has passed down her expertise to her nine children and members of her local community. 

While families of Mexican and Central American Catholic background often built altars in their homes to honor their ancestors, the evolution of D铆a de los Muertos into a community event with social significance can be traced to the 1970s, when Chicano artists at a small East LA-based non-profit organization called  began promoting it. 

The organization claims credit for originating the practice of  the familiar calavera designs that are a signature of D铆a de los Muertos community events. And, it was at SHG where Esparza turned her family tradition into a community art form, creating large-scale interactive altars as art installations. 

Betty Avila, executive director of SHG, explains that the organization鈥檚 co-founders, 鈥渨ere interested in providing a cultural celebration that wasn鈥檛 Cinco de Mayo, that wasn鈥檛 totally commodified, and that was truly grounded in the culture of the community.鈥� The early D铆a de los Muertos celebrations were 鈥渃losely tied to this very nascent identity of the time鈥攖he Chicano aesthetic political identity,鈥� she says. 

Decades later, SHG continues to organize large community celebrations in LA each October leading into early November, promoting the rich cultural tradition that it helped to craft and popularize. 鈥淚t鈥檚 evolved over time for both the processing of communal grief and trauma and also as a platform to speak on issues that are impacting the community,鈥� Avila says. 

Large altars at Grand Park in downtown LA invite interaction from attendees who are invited to display photos of their own loved ones who have passed away. The point is, according to Avila, for the community to acknowledge 鈥渢hings that are extremely personal but that are also universal.鈥� 

Alongside personal altars, it is common to see altars reflecting social movements centered on collective traumas such as remembrances of the victims of police brutality, of missing and murdered Indigenous women, and of undocumented migrant deaths along the border.  

View a photo essay of the 2021 Noche de Ofrenda organized by Self Help Graphics in Grand Park, Los Angeles.聽

Over the years, many other community organizations in U.S. cities with large Mexican American populations have held annual D铆a de los Muertos celebrations, bringing together families for events that feature face painting and costumes, altar-making workshops, local artist performances and exhibitions, and food vendors. 

鈥淐ulture is shared and transported between people and it flows in both directions,鈥� Avila says. Still, she finds the inevitable conflation of D铆a de los Muertos with Halloween to be particularly galling, saying that the Day of the Dead celebration 鈥渋s very different, it is totally something else.鈥� 

Eventually the Chicano-led cultural movement that SHG was central in promoting throughout LA spread across the U.S. and even flowed back across the southern border, feeding into Mexican celebrations. Outside of cities like Oaxaca, 鈥渋t wasn鈥檛 really a huge, huge tradition [in Mexico] until now,鈥� Alcaraz says. 

鈥淐hicano artists had everything to do with making it popular,鈥� he continues. 鈥淚t only took 40 to 50 years. But that鈥檚 how culture works, and then all of a sudden, boom! It explodes, and there鈥檚 D铆a de los Muertos in every corner.鈥� 

Recentering the Tradition鈥檚 Original Intent: To Honor the Dead

Years before Coco was conceived, Sony Pictures Entertainment invited Alcaraz to pitch a Day of the Dead-themed animated film. Alcaraz remembers the studio executives telling him, 鈥淲e like the pretty flowers and the sugar skulls, but could you keep the 鈥榙eath鈥� part out of it?鈥� 

But of course, death is central. 鈥淚t was the ancient belief that death is not the end of life but another phase of life,鈥� says Esparza, who sees the altars she builds each year as 鈥渁 bridge between life and death.鈥� 

At the heart of the yearly celebration is family, ancestral memory, and the intimate connections between generations. Esparza recalls her mother telling her that 鈥渢he remembrance of our ancestors, of our family members,鈥� is the most important part of the celebration. 鈥淲e are here on their shoulders, on their resistance, their resilience, their survival, their love.鈥� 

It is a concept that can get lost amid the eye-catching motifs of skeletons and flowers, both for consumers and those seeking to capitalize on the tradition. And it is what practitioners of the traditions are hoping to remind those who revel in the art, face paint, costumery, and other accoutrements of D铆a de los Muertos.  

Chicano Artists Continue Their Fight for Visibility

鈥淚 told them, 鈥業鈥檓 not going to rubberstamp your project,鈥� says Alcaraz, recalling his reaction when Disney/Pixar invited him to be a consultant on Coco. He told the filmmakers then that he wanted no part of a film that would engage in what he called 鈥淏rown-facing,鈥� with White actors playing the roles of characters of Mexican origin. 

Participating in the making of Coco offered Alcaraz, Esparza, and others an opportunity to shape the way in which their cultural tradition would be presented to the world by a massive commercial enterprise. 

Ultimately the film鈥檚 cast was , a significant achievement for a community that is routinely  on American screens. 鈥淲e needed that film to show Indigenous people, brown-skinned Mexican people on screen. It鈥檚 super important to show that,鈥� Alcaraz says.

D铆a de los Muertos has offered Chicanos and Mexican Americans the chance to be uniquely visible in a nation that has overwhelmingly marginalized and oppressed their communities. If the tradition has become so pervasive today that it faces cultural appropriation and commercial exploitation, some see that as a marker of success and an opportunity for practitioners to continually re-center their communities and the original intent of ancestral connectedness. 

While artists like Esparza have seen the demand for their work increase dramatically over the years, they have faced increasingly powerful pressures to commercialize their art. 鈥淚 feel it鈥檚 a spiritual endeavor far removed from being commercial,鈥� says Esparza, who is often offered commissions to create altars that include product advertisement and has refused. 

Others see a bright side to the visibility. 鈥淢exican culture is already a super popular culture all across the planet. I think that鈥檚 fantastic and I think we should get more of it,鈥� Alcaraz says. 鈥溛蘼胧悠�, more, more!鈥�