Jacksonville's Celebration of the Day of the Dead
It is time for Jacksonville seventh annual Dia de Los Muertos downtown and I’m joined by Andrea and Cesar and I, I didn’t get her name. Jimena Jimena. Thank you all so much for joining us today. Thank you so much for me. Oh my God, y’all look fabulous. Uh But for someone who doesn’t really know much about this holiday, what is the day of the dead? And how is it celebrated in Mexico? So for us Mexicans, the uh the day of the dead is something happy. We remember our deceased loved ones with happiness. We create altars,
we dress as, as the death people and we mock at them. So we are having these uh different altars creations with different elements, wind fire as you can see uh with the paper cuts that we have here in there. Oh, yeah, those are so cool. We dress of course as Katrina. That is the the traditional uh figure of the dead. But this is a pretty woman. It’s not something snowy or creepy, but a very beautiful woman that comes and, and, and plays with us and, and eats with us, right? So, so talk about some of
the traditions then around the holiday. So around this holiday, it’s uh a cultural heritage of humanity. Since 2008. Uh we create altars with bread of, of the day of the
celebration, there’s gonna be one tonight, tell everyone about it. So everyone is invited uh tonight from 5 to 9, we have the seventh annual celebration of the Day of the Dead. And here is the president of the, the communication, the creator for more than eight years, Cesar Mar uh Maril Rubio. He has done and followed this tradition for more than eight years in Jacksonville, uniting the community, sharing all our traditions. There’s going to be music, there’s going to be food, drinks and contest and a contest of Katrina, right? Of the of this personification of the
day of the dead, but also of altars. So come visit and also you can paint your face, you encourage people to dress up. Of course, everyone is encouraged and everyone is welcome, is a family event at the library. So it’s James Weldon Park. It’s downtown Laura street, all Laura street, all down all this street is going to be closed. OK? And then, and then tell us about this, the significance of this doll here. So we have here, La Mu Cale, the doll Lele that is made by women, right? In, in Mexico, in Michoacan, in in
Michoacan and in Queretaro, right? And so it is uh it changes because it’s our craft. So every doll is different and we would like to give it to you Jordan. Oh, we’re gonna definitely put this in the office for everyone to enjoy. This is adorable and it’s so beautiful and it’s like authentic me brought from Queretaro to all of you. All right. So the makeup too, uh there’s a lot of significance obviously with kind of like the skull look and like sugared skulls. I know that’s like a big thing. So um can you describe like
the tradition of the, the makeup itself? So she has the teeth, the right? The eyes are very important because we believe that eyes are the windows of the soul, right? We we can understand the person, of course, she has the beautiful Mexican hat. And here we have Cesar also with the uh mask from Chiapas. And this is kind of a diva a creature that also it’s used to uh um make frightened or frightened, but the bad spirit spirit, right? And that’s like the tradition of Halloween too. You know, a lot of people think Oh, that’s
evil. And it’s like, well, actually the, the reason behind scary costumes, at least not like some of the others out there but is to scare away the evil spirit. So, it’s actually kind of the opposite of what some people might think. So. That’s really, really cool. All right. So, we have some dancers today, right? What are we gonna see? We have, uh, Raul Bonilla here, our, the instructor and he’s going to explain a little bit more about the dance. OK, Raul, let us know what we can expect. OK. Hi, how you doing? Uh We are
the sunset uh group dances from Jacksonville and then we’re gonna be participating today on, on seven annual um Dia de Muertos with um all the people from Jacksonville. We invited you to, to be with us tonight and we’re gonna give you a little taste about what’s gonna happen tonight with the little girls from the dance group. So we’re gonna represent a little bit of State of Oaxaca, Mexico. This is not exactly the date of death, but there’s something that we used to do to be happy with them with our loved ones. So I hope you
guys enjoy and then we’re ready to perform. Are you guys ready? So let’s see it. Thank you. I wanna see. Thank you. You got them. Yeah. Thank you. School build them and the T and the slipper. Bye bye. What? OK. She was 30. I don’t know. One of the Yeah, have fun. All right guys, we’ll be right back. Thank you so much. That was amazing.
