Part One settled the question of permission. Your dead are yours, the formats belong to the communities that made them and the line runs between feeding your dead and wearing someone else’s inheritance.
This is the part where you put it all together in a respectful way that makes sense.
Everything below is the Mexican-style inspired ofrenda tradition, which is the most widely kept and the most documented. I will name where something comes from a different lineage. Take what you can carry and leave the rest.
It should also be asserted that the original agenda of the Chicano movement in the 70s-90s was to purposely make Dia de Los Muertos a mainstream phenomena.
Why? Because people of Mexican and Central American descent were targets of racism and they wanted it to stop. With mainstream acceptance, racial violence would hopefully decrease. While there is certainly racial conflict today in the United States, the fact that Day of the Dead is so popular and Bad Bunny doing the Superbowl, shows that these efforts do pay off and are intended to invite outsiders to a friendly degree. For more on that see my article: https://substack.com/@solomonpakal/note/p-177426488?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=4sa84a
What You’ll Need
Photos of your loved ones
