Dia de los Muertos Festival in Grand Park DTLA

After dinner downtown, George and I wandered up to Grand Park where a Dia de los Muertos festival has been going on. The park is filled with offrendas, altars to departed loved ones piled with photographs, favorite foods, flowers, and memories. The first large, colorful one we came upon was by the local Oaxacan community. A few were personal, to a single person or family. But most of them were made by various civic groups, connecting specific remembrances to general themes, like one from a Latino LGBT group remembering those who had been ostracized by their family and had died way too young. Some extended the theme outside its original cultural roots, like one from a local group of Yemeni immigrants remembering their family members who have died back in war-torn Yemen. It reminded me a bit of the AIDS Quilt, in the power of a large scale built up out of particulars. So many photos of beloved grandparents or those cut off young, each with their own story. And it was also wonderful to see the people wandering the park engaging with these offrendas. Many of them were dressed up, in white skeleton faces, black dresses and suits, women with marigolds in their hair. I saw a father with a young son, the little boy in skeleton face and red hoodie, looking just like the kid from Coco, and the little boy was at an altar reading a placard with the story of the person pictured. It was so sweet. So glad that we came upon this. (View photo album.)