The selling of Día de los Muertos in Los Angeles

By Tony Castro, Voxxi

Leave it to America to merchandize Mexico’s traditional Day of the Dead, but nowhere is the selling of Día de los Muertos bigger than in Los Angeles.

Merchants have joined concert promoters and art galleries featuring Mexican folk art and other merchants to use Día de los Muertos to extend the increasingly big money merchandising of Halloween beyond the city’s Hispanic communities.

“Although Día de los Muertos is largely celebrated within the Latino culture because it’s where it originated, it’s now celebrated by many, many different people,” says Steve Acevedo of the Chimmaya Gallery in predominantly Latino East Los Angeles.

Possibly the biggest Día de los Muertos celebration took place Saturday at Hollywood Forever Cemetery where some 20,000 people attended at the 13^th annual commemoration six days ahead of the traditional Nov. 2 Day of the Dead.

“It’s something that has grown through a sort of overwhelming interest of the general public, not just Latinos but the greater L.A. County community,” says Jay Boileau of the cemetery whose dead include such Hollywood legends as Rudolph Valentino, Cecil B DeMille, Douglas Fairbanks, Norma Talmadge and Tyrone Power.

“Its popularity exceeded our expectations. What started as a traditional event kept growing and growing.”

Día de los Muertos or Day of the Dead, a popular Hollywood attraction

The celebration Saturday began at noon and ran until midnight featuring a lavishly costumed procession, live musical performances by such Latino groups as Ozomatli and offered more than 100 commemorative altars and more.

And did we mention the commercialization?

Figure 20,000 people paying $10 a head for admission, and you see that Día de los Muertos has turned into a profitable Hollywood roadside attraction as well.

Plus multinational food giant Nestle was one of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery celebration, serving free hot chocolate while promoting Abuelita, its popular Mexican-style hot chocolate.

Traditionalists like Acevedo are quick to point out that Día de los Muertos and Halloween have no connection to each other, which some confuse because they are so close on the calendar.

“Dia de los Muertos is purely a celebration of our loved ones that have gone before us,” says Acevedo. “There isn’t anything ghoulish or scary.”

In Los Angeles, Día de los Muertos has taken on such a life of its own that even the Walt Disney Co. and Sony Pictures have gotten into the act.

They are the co-sponsors of the major celebration on Friday, the actual Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), at the Eastside gallery Self Help Graphics & Art in Boyle Heights, which organizers say is one of the longest-running Day of the Dead events in the country.

“It’s evolved,” says Self Help Graphics Executive Director Evonne Gallardo said. “Today, it’s much less looking to Mexico for how it’s expressed and celebrated and more reflective of what it’s like for a Chicano or recent arrival to L.A.”

This article was first published in Voxxi.

Los Angeles-based writer Tony Castro is the author of the critically-acclaimed “Chicano Power: The Emergence of Mexican America” and the best-selling “Mickey Mantle: America’s Prodigal Son.”