From Amigos805 staff reports
Día de los Muertos events will continue this weekend in Camarillo, Goleta, Nipomo, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Santa Maria, Santa Paula and Ventura.
Camarillo
• CSU Channel Islands will present its annual Día de los Muertos celebration 4 to 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 2 in and around CI’s John Spoor Broome Library, Camarillo. The traditions of the Mixteco people will play a significant role in the celebration, organizers reported in a media release.
Music, speeches from area dignitaries and traditional altars to deceased ancestors will all be part of the celebration, along with the tribute to the Mixteco culture, which will be crafted on seven tons of sand by Los Angeles Chicana artist Isabel Martinez and CI art students.
“My idea is to create a mandela, a symbol that represents the universe,” said Martinez, who is part Mixtec. “In the center will be a skull, which represents rebirth.”
The seventh annual celebration will begin with an Aztec blessing and include lively student performances from CI’s Ballet Folklorico and Mariachi performers as well as the Oxnard College Folklorico.
Speakers will include CI President Richard R. Rush, Oxnard College Interim President James M. Limbaugh, Mexican Consulate Berenice Díaz Ceballos, and Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project (MICOP) Executive Director Arcenio Lopez.
CI Art lecturer Denise Lugo, who has organized the celebration from the beginning, said that “Day of the Dead” is a Latino tradition that is more joyful than solemn. “We play music, we sing we talk,” Lugo said of the ancient Latino tradition. “We celebrate the lives of our ancestors. We don’t cry, because they continue to live in us.”
CI’s “Day of the Dead” celebration will be an intercultural, interdisciplinary effort with students from many different areas of study creating altars to loved ones who have passed on. The emphasis on the Mixteco cultural traditions is because Ventura County has the largest concentration of Mixteco people in the nation, Lugo said, and many of their children now attend or will attend CI.
The altars contain photos of those who have passed on, as well as symbols, items or food that the deceased loved ones enjoyed in life. The skulls at the center of the “Day of the Dead” celebration are not meant to be frightening or sorrowful symbols, but colorful, whimsical ornamentation designed to remind the living that their relationship with those who have passed is never over.
“It’s the idea that death is not the end,” Lugo said. “In reality there is no end, because we continue to love them.”
Limited parking is available on campus with the purchase of a $6 daily permit; follow signs to the parking permit dispensers. Free parking is available at the Camarillo Metrolink Station/Lewis Road with bus service to and from the campus.
Click here for more information.
Goleta
• Mariachi Monarcas de Goleta will perform at the Celebracion de Día de los Muertos at 1:3o p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1 at the Goleta Community Center, 5679 Hollister Ave., Goleta. The event will include dinner and beverages, art activities. “Our very own youth Mariachi Monarcas of Goleta will be performing for the community on Nov 1 in celebration of Dia De Los Muertos. There will be art and craft activities, food, and multiple Mariachi presentations. Please come and support our youth group whose goal is to provide children throughout the goleta valley with cultural arts opportunities,” organizers reported in a media release. Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for children. Click here or here for more information.
Nipomo
• The DANA Cultural Center’s Dana Adobe Nipomo Amigos will present its annual Día de los Muertos celebration starting at noon Sunday, Nov. 1 at the Rancho Nipomo Dana Adobe, 671 S. Oakglen Ave., Nipomo. Free. Call 805-929-5679 or visit http://www.danaadobe.org/event/dia-de-los-muertos/?event_date=2015-11-01 for more information.
Santa Barbara
• KCRW presents “Día de los Muertos Celebration” featuring Kinky, Bomba Estéreo, La Santa Cecilia, Chicano Batman, Conjunto Zacamandu, DJ Carlos Niño, Danza Azteca, Chinelo Dancers and Ballet Folklorico at 5 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30 at the Santa Barbara Bowl, 1122 N. Milpas St., Santa Barbara. Tickets are $35 to $50. Visit https://sbbowl.com/concerts/detail/2015_10_30_dia_de_los_muertos_celebration for more information.
• Casa Dolores — Center for the Study of the Popular Arts of Mexico, will present an altar featuring El Catrin y La Catrina, created by the Linares family, from Oct. 31 through Nov. 14 at 1023 Bath Street (between Carrillo & Figueroa). Call 805-963-1032, send an email to info@casadolores.org or visit http://www.casadolores.org for more information.
San Luis Obispo
• The “Dia de Los Muertos / Day of the Dead” Celebration and Procession will be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1 at the Downtown San Luis Obispo’s Farmers’ Market. Presented by Wilshire Health & Community Services. The free community festival includes dancers, musicians, poets and artists. Visit http://downtownslo.com/event/el-dia-de-los-muertos/ or http://www.wilshirehcs.org, send an email to info@wilshirehcs.org or call 805-782-8600 for more information.
Santa Maria
• The Día de los Muertos Cultural Celebration will be held from noon to 5 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1 at the Veterans’ Memorial Community Center, 313 W. Tunnell St., Santa Maria.
A free family festival filled with cultural activities that honors the lives of loved ones in the tradition of Dia de los Muertos.
Festivities will include altars, entertainment, a children’s parade, youth activities, an art show, food, inflatables and crafts.
Visit cityofsantamaria.org or
http://www.seecalifornia.com/events/day-of-the-dead.html for more information.
• MASCARA’s 21st Annual Dia De Los Muertos Celebration will be held from Oct. 28 through Nov. 2 at the Santa Maria Town Center Mall. Click here or call 805-925-1010 for more information.
Santa Paula
• A Día de los Muertos Community Celebration will be held Nov. 1 at the Santa Paula Art Museum, the Museum of Ventura County Agriculture Museum, and the Santa Paula Cemetery.
This free Family Day Event will include a day of traditional craft making, music, Aztec dancers, food, storytelling and altar installations. Dia de los Muertos attire is welcomed, organizers reported in a media release.
Pick up a Dia de los Muertos passport and collect a stamp at each of the participating locations to enter into a free raffle drawing. A limited number of passports will be available at each of the participating organizations during the event. The location, hours and activities for each organization is listed below.
- Santa Paula Art Museum, Jeanette Cole Art Center
- 117 N. 10th Street, Santa Paula
- 805-525-5554
- 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm
The Santa Paula Art Museum will feature works by artist John Nava and the annual De Colores Art Show which honors female farmworkers. Families can explore the Museum by participating in an “I Spy” activity, create paper flowers, La Catrina bonnets and El Catrin sombreros, decorate sugar skulls and hear stories of the Day of the Dead.
- Museum of Ventura County Agriculture Museum
- 926 Railroad Avenue, Santa Paula
- 805-525-3100
- 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm
The Agriculture Museum, in partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will showcase the relationship between Monarch butterflies and other pollinators to agriculture, as well as the symbolic role of the Monarch representing the spirits of ancestors in the Hispanic community.
Each year, hundreds of millions of butterflies travel from the United States and Canada in late October to early November during the time of Dia de los Muertos. The monarch migration is symbolic of ancestors’ journey home.
During the event visitors can participate in butterfly-themed activities including creating a butterfly mask and making paper butterflies. Tour our garden of native plants and pollinators, see a live bee hive demo, and count wintering butterflies.
- Pierce Brothers Santa Paula Cemetery
- 380 Cemetery Road, Santa Paula
- 805-525-5258
- 12:00 pm to 6:00 pm
The Santa Paula Cemetery will hold a day of festivities where visitors can build an altar (ofrenda) at a loved one’s grave site or a community altar, and participate in a procession lead by Aztec Dancers, a blessing by Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish, Mariachi music, face painting, sugar skull decorating, and Folklorico Dancers. Food trucks and vendors will be available during the event.
Ventura
• The Museum of Ventura County hosts its 15th annual Dia de los Muertos Celebration with traditional music, dance, and crafts from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at 100 E. Main St., Ventura.
This free event has something for everyone, including community altars throughout the museum galleries, craft making (papel picados, paper flowers, skulls, masks), face painting, and food trucks.
Presentations by Ballet Folklorico de Bell Arts, DATA Mariachi, Ballet Folkorico Mestizo of Oxnard College and Danza Azteca Tonantzin.
Please join us and explore the brand new Children’s Garden featuring Chumash house, native plants, Monarch butterfly life cycle displayboard, scavenger hunt, the museum reported in a media release.
Click here for more information.
Nov. 7 celebration
• And don’t forget that the 2015 Día de Los Muertos Celebration will be held from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 7 at Conejo Mountain Funeral Home, Memorial Park and Crematory in Camarillo.
The event will feature a vintage lowrider car show, a Mr. and Mrs. Calaca pageant, a Norteno musical group from Oxnard, a rock ‘n’ español banda group and 805 Caliente.
The celebration will also include Alma de México folklorico dancers, Xavier ‘Big X’ Montes and his Angels on Harps performance group, Mariachi de Camarillo.
The event will be led off with mariachi and folklorico performers from Inlakech Cultural Arts Center in Oxnard.
The celebration will also include a variety of food trucks, arts and crafts vendors, a muertos-themed art exhibit in the main lobby of cemetery’s offices, face painting, free prizes and altars created by members of local clubs from various Mexican states along an altar by the Mixteco / Indigena Community Organizing Project.
This will be the final year the celebration will be led by Javier Gomez, director of Inlakech.
Call 805-890-2193 or visit https://www.facebook.com/DiaDeLosMuertosVentura for more information on the 2015 Día de Los Muertos Celebration.
Missing your Día de Los Muertos event?
Please send information to frank@amigos805.com