Day of the Dead celebration fills Tacoma community center with dance, food and memories of the departed

Ana Castellani remembers celebrating Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, in her native Mexico. The annual gathering of families and friends to honor their deceased loved ones is traditionally celebrated on Nov. 1 and 2.

Castellani left Mexico at age six and grew up in Gig Harbor. Día de los Muertos became a distant memory.

Until Saturday.

That’s when she and hundreds of other people turned out for a Day of the Dead celebration at the Eastside Community Center. For Castellani, it was the first time she had been to one since a child.

“It’s very emotional,” the Port Orchard resident said as a Mariachi band played on a stage. “A lot of good memories.”

Castellani was wearing a traditional Mexican dress embroidered with flowers. Flowers adorned her hair and even surrounded a tattoo of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo on her back.

In Mexico, ofrendas (altars) are created in homes, graveyards and mausoleums for the holiday. Photos of the deceased are placed there along with flowers — marigolds are the traditional choice — and thematic art, sugar skulls and candles.

Inside the community center on Saturday a community altar topped with a four-foot-tall calavera, or skull, took up one corner of the center’s largest room. On the altar were flowers, food and a photo of a young man.

Día de los Muertos traces its roots to pre-Hispanic indigenous Mexico. As people with Mexican ancestry have grown in number in the U.S. and Americans have become more aware of the holiday, it’s developed an increasing presence. The holiday was the setting for the 2017 Disney/Pixar animated film “Coco”.

Metro Parks Tacoma and the Calavera Collective put on the free, day-long festival Saturday. A procession down Portland Avenue to the community center led by feather-crowned Aztec dancers kicked off the day.

Inside the community center the scent of copal (tree resin) incense filled the room where the public enjoyed entertainment. A variety of different Mexican cultures — from indigenous to post-colonial — were represented by dancers and musicians.

One group, made up of people of indigenous Mixtec origin, performed the Dance of the Devil. One of the dancers, Luis Gonzalez of Federal Way, said his group was made up of people from the Mexican states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Puebla.

The dance doesn’t glorify the devil, Gonzalez said, holding his horned devil mask.

“We’re from a land where we didn’t have the concept of the devil,” he said. The dance, with indigenous, African and Catholic influences, incorporates a mix of meaning and imagery.

“It’s hard to explain,” Gonzales said. “It’s just to celebrate, you know, just have fun.”

Eight men (diablos) and women (diablas) made up the group. “Y tenemos diablitos (And we have little devils),” one dancer said, referring to children.

Men wore hats, buckskin jackets and pants made from goat hides. Women wore brightly colored dresses.

Inside a nearby kitchen bread loaves decorated with skulls and other Mexican motifs were waiting to be placed on the altar. Nearby, boxes of pan de muerto, or bread of the dead, were covered in pink sugar. They would soon be handed out to festival attendees.

A free meal of birria (a Mexican stew), nopales (cactus) and atole, a corn-based drink, was also served.

“There’s a little bit of sadness,” Calavera Collective member Maria Teresa Gamez said about Dia de los Muertos. “But there’s also a celebration of life at the same time. And we honor them, and we remember them and we bring the things that were important to them and put them in the altar. And it’s a way to keep them alive.”

Keeping the memories of her ancestors alive is important for Castellani, who brought her sons Theodore, 2, and Vinny, 5, to the event. When they got home later Saturday the family planned to make an altar to honor her grandmother and the boys’ great-grandfather.

They planned to place their loved one’s favorite food and drinks on the altar, Castellani said, looking at Vinny.

Vinny nodded in agreement as he enthusiastically devoured a slice of pan de muerto.