Paola Lerma took her fellow Big Picture High School students on a journey of cultural discovery during a four-week session examining grief, remembrance and the Mexican celebration of Dia de los Muertos.
Lerma, 17, a senior, helped her teacher, Shannon Cruise, lead the four-week session – discussing her family’s Dia de los Muertos traditions from their ancestral home in Ciudad Juárez.
“Dia de los Muertos isn’t a celebration of death. It’s a celebration of life,” Lerma said. “You talk about what a loved one liked to do, their habits, their favorite movies, their favorite foods. It’s a day when we welcome those who have died back into our lives for a day and have them spend the day with us.”
One of the day’s traditions is to create altars to loved ones who have died. The Big Picture students created a class altar for display as part of the Durango Arts Center’s Festival de los Muertos, which will be on display through Nov. 9.
The altar often includes photographs that a departed family member loved, the person’s favorite flowers, and food and water for the long journey the spirit of the departed has made to the family home.
Big Picture High students celebrate Dia de los Muertos
The Big Picture High class’ altar contained an infantry helmet for a student’s grandfather who served in Korea and Vietnam, and a banana for a student’s grandmother who liked to be called “nana banana.”
It also contained a drawing of Lerma’s grandmother who was noted for her protection and nurturing of a peach tree and her love for coffee. In the left pupil of Lerma’s grandmother’s eye was a reflection of her peach tree and in the right pupil a reflection of a cup of coffee.
The class altar also included Pan de Muerto, bread of the dead, baked using the Lermas’ family recipe. Lerma, who is the daughter of Laura and Benito Lerma, told classmates they should remember the person whose life they are celebrating as they knead the dough.
Cruise said the class was a great experience for students to see a different cultural perspective on grieving and death.
“Often, we don’t talk a lot about people who have passed. We put them away in a box, and don’t talk about them. This is an opportunity to open the box,” she said.
Perhaps the most touching item on the Big Picture altar was a letter to Cruise, who came to Big Picture High after teaching at Aztec High School. The letter was from Casey Marquez, an art student of Cruise’s who was killed in the Aztec High School shooting Dec. 7, 2017.
The letter was one of thanks to Cruise for what Marquez had learned.
“Art is what’s inside, your emotions, your feelings, your thoughts,” Marquez wrote. “It’s part of you. You can change the world with your (art) piece or you can send a message using your art.”
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