Around 300 people were anticipated Tuesday evening for the annual socially-distanced community gathering and mass for Día de los Muertos at Guillen Community Cemetery.
This is the fifth year that manager Maria G. Guillen has invited families of the departed to visit the cemetery to bring offerings and spend time.
“As the years have gone by, it’s gotten a little more elaborate,” Guillen said.
This year the event featured a mass by Fr. Joshua Carlos of Holy Family Church Brownsville along with a blessing of the cemetery and finished with performances by Mariachi Sol Azteca.
The celebration of life is a colorful one as banners, flowers and framed photos cover the cemetery grounds. As each family arrives they set up and clean their loved one’s graves and set out the items they’ll need for their departed’s spirit to visit and join them in the celebration.
“For their spirits to come from where they are afar, we find four elements that will guide them this way,” Guillen said.
The wind is used to guide the spirits to the cemetery, and so they can see it colorful banners are placed around the cemetery grounds with gaps for spirits and people to pass through. As the journey will have made them hungry, Guillen and her volunteers give each family pan de muerto, which acts as the grains of the earth, to lay on the grave. Bottles of water are passed out to pour into the earth or leave on the site to quench the thirst. Lastly, candles, or in this case cubes with LED lights due to fire concerns, are placed on the grave to light the way for spirits that come after the sun has set.
For Estella Ortiz who came to visit at the graveside of her mother, Maria Luisa Ortiz, alongside her sister Sonia De La Fuentes it’s been a nice way to spend time as a family with her mother these past three years.
“We like to bring bread, water and empanadas from her favorite dulceria. She used to love coffee so much, so we brought her coffee, too” Ortiz said.
Even with the cemetery full of groups of people, the grounds are quiet and peaceful with the sounds of chatter as families visit together. Following the mass service, the cemetery begins to fill with music as the mariachis play, walking from group to group in the last hour before night comes and the event ends.
