Day of the Dead Reflection

In celebration of the Day of the Dead, we participated in a project centered on the culture and
traditions of Mexico in relation to Dia de los Muertos. To start, we studied the Aztec culture and
how that contributed to the start of this holiday. After this, we learned about poems, or Calaveras
as they are called in Mexico that poke fun at death. They are often about famous people or
occupations and are satirical. We then were tasked with creating our own Calavera. I chose to
write my first one about a backpacker and my other one about Kylie Jenner. However easy
writing a small poem may sound, creating this in Spanish was anything but easy. Refinement was
an essential part of this project. To start, I wrote the beginning of the backpacker one but soon
realized it was poorly written and didn't make sense. I moved onto the second about Kylie Jenner
and soon ran into the same problem. I was very frustrated and confused but was saved by Maya.
She read me some of what she had and inspiration flowed back. I proceeded to write and rewrite
3 different versions of each poem and turned them into Sara for grammatical help. Each time
they were a bit clearer and followed the conjugation, accent, and spelling rules of Spanish. When
I finally completed both Calaveras and was content with my product, I chose the backpacking
one to create my Clavera artistica. By this point, we were only days away from exhibition and I
only needed one last thing to be completed, my deceased relative obituary to set on the altar, a
traditional thing Mexican families do with their deceased relatives. Finally, after a month of
learning, creating and refining, the Exhibition came and what a fiesta it was! It was a celebration
of Mexican culture and what we had learned about. It reflected how Mexicans embrace death as
a natural, even funny thing, how they value jokes and family and take time to remember their
ancestors but most of all this Exhibition reflected the importance of tradition and connection and
culture!