Looking Back: Día de Los Muertos and Mexic-Arte Museum’s Viva la Vida Festival
The Mexic-Arte Museum’s annual Viva La Vida Festival and Parade stands out as a vibrant, lively event from fall 2023. Women dressed in elaborate Jalisco dresses twirled across the streets of downtown Austin and performers pounded drums as Conchero dancers marched around, their feathery headpieces swaying back and forth. A few thousand attend the parade every year, many of them planning for it while other curious onlookers stumble upon the parade by happenstance.
For forty years, Viva La Vida has been an opportunity to engage in Día de los Muertos festivities that can be challenging to find elsewhere in Austin. As the marigold season passes it is necessary to recognize that Día de los Muertos is an important cultural holiday that emphasizes honoring and remembering deceased loved ones. Though Día de los Muertos is primarily a Mexican tradition, Mexic-Arte’s celebration includes the greater Hispanic population, allowing organizations like Amigha Hispana, as well as other members of the Austin community, to participate in the festivities.
Still dressed for a monarch migration event at Govalle Elementary School, parade participant Jessica Victoria fastens plastic marigolds and butterflies onto the skirt portion of her costume in preparation for Mexic-Arte Museum’s Viva la Vida Festival in Austin, Texas Oct. 26, 2023.
Victoria awaits the start of the Viva la Vida Festival parade in the staging area with sons Aurelio (center) and Apollo (right) in downtown Austin, Texas, Oct. 28, 2023.
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Mariachi skeleton figurines stand at the Govalle Elementary School community altar in Austin, Texas on Oct. 31, 2023. Yasmin Espinoza, Victoria’s coworker, established the altar at the school a few years ago. Victoria said the figurines were Epinoza’s first purchase for the altar, as her grandfather would hire mariachis to serenade her grandmother.
A group of Conchero dancers line up for Mexic-Arte’s Viva La Vida Parade in the staging area in downtown Austin, Texas Oct. 28, 2023.
Drummers performing the Danza de Indios Chichimecas rehearse before the parade begins in downtown Austin, Texas, Oct. 28, 2023.
Parade participant Iovanna Alonso, a member of Amhiga Hispana, poses for a portrait in downtown Austin, Texas, Oct. 28, 2023. Alonso said she spent four hours putting on makeup for the parade.
Dancers from Roy Lozano’s Ballet Folklorico de Texas twirl in their Jalisco dresses as they walk the parade in downtown Austin, Texas, Oct. 28, 2023.
As part of the post-parade festivities, Viva la Vida attendees pass through an ofrenda art installation in downtown Austin, Texas, Oct. 28, 2023.
An extension of Mexic-Arte’s 40th Annual Dia de los Muertos exhibition, the Ofrenda de la Comunidad stands as a meaningful collection of memories and personal artifacts Nov. 11, 2023 in downtown Austin, Texas.
Victoria and her son, Apollo, pose on the steps of her childhood home Oct. 28, 2023 in Austin, Texas. She said the home holds the fondest memories of her youth. Before the parade, Victoria said she wanted to honor her great-great-great-grandmother, who raised most of her family at the now-vacant rental. The home was demolished Dec. 21, 2023.
About the story
I had never attended Viva La Vida before, nor am I of Hispanic background, so it was evident I needed to speak to someone more involved and connected. After finding her interactions with Mexic-Arte Musem's Facebook page, I contacted Jessica Victoria, a veteran parade participant. We met for lunch, and I quickly learned how much Viva La Vida meant to her; she told me about how her grandmother lived in Aguascalientes, which is commonly known to have some of the best Día de los Muertos celebrations in Mexico. Although incomparable in size and longevity, Viva La Vida is one of the limited ways she can practice the cultural tradition in Austin.
Every year, on top of having a full-time job and raising her two younger children, Aurelio and Apollo, Victoria crafts ornate costumes for herself and some of her family members. I wanted to document part of this process, and she agreed to let me photograph her working on her outfit. We met at the Pan American Recreation Center in East Austin and I watched as she carefully sewed plastic marigolds and monarch butterflies to her skirt. Coming straight from an event for the migration of monarch butterflies at Govalle Elementary School, where she is a staff member, she was still wearing her costume: a black antenna headband, an orange butterfly wing cape, matching earrings and black buckled boots. She later told me about the significance of the decorations she placed on the ruffled tulle skirt.
“Marigolds symbolize the connection between life and death,” Victoria said. “Live marigold’s scent is used on our altars to guide our loved (ones) to our homes and symbolize the visit of our loved ones in spirit.”
Looking back on the situation, it feels like there’s something unintentionally symbolic about Victoria remaining in her butterfly outfit as she worked on her costume for the Día de los Muertos celebration. According to Journey North, a science program facilitated by the University of Wisconsin in Madison that tracks wildlife migration, the arrival of the monarchs by the beginning of November marks the start of two coinciding Mexican traditions: a seasonal event, corn harvesting, and a cultural event, Día de Los Muertos. Though the school event wasn’t geared specifically towards the Mexican tradition, it’s almost as though Victoria was honoring her loved ones and Mexican heritage in an additional way she might not have realized.
When I first met with Victoria for lunch, she told me about an Austin-based photographer, Roj Rodriguez, who set out to rediscover his Mexican roots after establishing himself as a successful photographer. His book, “Mi Sangre,” acts as photographic documentation of the time he spent reconnecting with Mexico and the people that reside there. At the beginning of the book, Rodriguez writes, “I looked to capture pride in visual form.” Reading about Rodriguez’s approach reminded me of when Héctor Tobar called attention to the negative portrayals of brown people in American media in the book, “Our Migrant Souls.” In the chapter “Lies,” Tobar explains,
“...visuals of immigrant suffering have become the dominant representation of Latino people in United States journalism. We see Latino men and women detained at street corners, locked inside pens, weeping as they say farewell to their children before surrendering to the authorities who will deport them. The relationship between those stark images and the reality of Latino life is analogous to the relationship between pornography and literature. Like pornography, these images are meant to give the viewer dominance over their subjects; they portray brown people who are docile and submissive, aliens to the orderly and affluent rule of white America,” (152-153).
As journalists, it’s our job to counteract this harmful narrative. I truly appreciate how Rodriguez chose to focus on documenting people’s pride for their culture, as opposed to their struggles in the context of white-dominated media. In the preface of “Mi Sangre,” Rodriguez writes, “Whether we want to admit it publicly, I think we all live our lives hoping to leave behind a legacy; something we can pass along to our children, our family, our people. In this exploration, I am leaving a legacy by documenting the beauty of the people and places that I came across in this journey.” With this project, I hope to leave behind a positive portrayal, a celebration of the beautiful customs and traditions of the Hispanic population that our media has grievously failed.