“Religion and Immigration: The Day of the Dead Altar.” A reflection by Jennifer Scheper Hughes

Californians now have a way to honor and remember their dead. We no longer have to mourn them in private. The Day of the Dead public altar creates intimacy and reverence. This is where family and community histories are woven and preserved. This is where generational histories of immigration unfold. Every altar has a story, a narrative arc: each one a chronicle, a material memory, of familial ties, of love, loss, and blessing; of punishment, and death, of prayers answered and prayers denied. Each altar gathers a story about personal loss, private pain, and social suffering. Sorrow and mourning are gathered there. . The altar encompasses and holds the power, pain, and paradox of the immigrant experience.

The altar is a holy plane that collapses the distinction between celestial and terrestrial realms: a sacred precinct,the privileged place of ritual encounter between human beings and celestial forces. The altar invites and then looses spirits onto city streets. In downtown Santa Ana the ghosts watch over their family members who cry in public, telling the stories of the dead to strangers and passers-by.

The altar is rebellion in material and aesthetic form: the religious space that is the hardest to police, the most difficult to legislate and regulate, the most easily shielded from scrutiny, and the last of all religious spaces to be secularized and domesticated. One altar builder explains: “This celebration, this altar, means that we are not conquered.”