""We can stop Mattel from making Catrina Barbies," Yañez told me. "Where we can make a difference and have some control is in what we can do as a community and for each other and how we engage with each other.""
""We are a very inviting culture. We have room at the table for everyone, but it's important to educate yourself and understand the holiday," she told me. "I try to avoid shaming people and policing people who don't understand. Instead, I tell stories and educate people about the meaning and origin.""
""I'm on this mission to share our stories, to spread awareness because there's so many misconceptions and stereotypes about our culture," Navarro said. "It is so, so, so beautiful how the Chicano movement and how our community has continued to amplify our stories, to keep our traditions alive and to keep our duality alive. And I'm so so proud of that.""
Día de los Muertos has become visible in mainstream America, frequently emphasized for its aesthetic and festive elements rather than as a channel for grief, remembrance and familial connection. Community members emphasize local control, mutual support and engagement as meaningful responses to commercialization and appropriation. Cultural hospitality combines with a push for education about the holiday's origins and practices, favoring storytelling over shaming. The observance functions as an act of resistance and resilience rooted in survival since colonial attempts to erase it. Immigrant communities face heightened psychological strain amid aggressive detentions and anti-immigrant policies.
Read at Kqed
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]