Día De Los Muertos at Hemisfair — formerly Muertosfest — filled downtown San Antonio this weekend with music, food and memories.
The Day of the Dead holiday observed on Nov. 1 and 2 has traditionally been a quiet, personal family event, celebrated at home or at a local graveyard, communing with memories, and the spirits of loved ones who have died.
In the past decade or so though, as the nuanced cultural attributes of the Southwest have emerged and been captured by ever-present cameras, the observance of Día De Los Muertos has grown exponentially. Movies have been produced and citywide celebrations have been embraced as a kind of return-to-roots exercise for some, and a curious new delight to others.
In San Antonio, the city has fully embraced Day of the Dead. The event at Hemisfair has already become an autumn mainstay.
On Saturday and Sunday, the Hemisfair grounds was filled with festive music.
Sidewalks were adorned with almost 80 altars honoring the dead, including one by Jennifer Gonzalez. Portraits of two smiling women were at the apex of her altar.
“Our altar is honoring my abuelas, my grandmothers. We actually lost my grandma Elena in 2023, and then exactly a year later, we lost my grandma Lupe. They're my precious grandmothers,” Gonzalez said.
She didn't just credit them for being good grandmothers. She said they were elemental in showing her how to become who she is.
“They are the reason that I am who I am today. They were strong, hard-working women,” she said. “They raised their children. They helped raise their grandchildren. They were both wonderful cooks, so we are keeping their homemade recipes alive by trying them ourselves.”
It turns out that they didn’t just serve as grandparents to the Gonzalez children. They were best friends to one another.
“The great thing was that they were best friends, so we call them co-madres. So we say that they're up in heaven having fun, playing Loteria and watching over us,” she said with a smile.
She and a brother and sister tidied up the ofrenda and answered questions from passers-by.
Most of the altars were based on a table or a series of them, with photos and candles and marigolds and elements from the lives of the people being honored. One had a distinctly different look.
“We have a three sided memorial here, It's lined with desert camo, digital mesh above our heads,” said Gabe Gonzalez, who originated Operation Solace.
This booth had a ceiling of shorts, from which 500 dog tags hung. Gonzalez said those military identification dog tags represented soldiers who have died by suicide.
“This altar right here is honoring the those who die of suicide and lose their battle with their demons in their head,” he said.
The 110 pictures on the left and right walls of the altar showed the smiling faces of men and women in military gear.
“There's a battle that, you know, we have that's between our ears, that we suffer in silence, and we put masks on that say, like, 'we're okay,'” Gonzalez said. “And you see them with their kids smiling and having a good time and fishing, and it just sometimes we can't escape those battles that we left out.”
Operation Solace is an effort to use Psilocybin mushrooms therapeutically to help veterans through their PTSD and other psychological trauma.
“We're hoping to raise money and raise awareness to promote low to no cost psychedelic therapy for veterans,” he said.
Gonzalez said he’s no doctor, but the way the therapy worked for him makes him optimistic it could work for others.
“You'll be able to just reset your mind a little bit, to give you just a half a second of breath to say, 'I don't need to act the way that I used to be acting,' and it just gives you a path forward,” Gonzalez said.
A little way further was a large altar dedicated to Eva Mireles, a teacher killed in the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting. Also pictured were each of the 19 students and the other teacher who died that day.
The ofrenda was set up by Eva Mireles' sisters, Maggie and Sandra.
“By doing this, we keep her memory alive, as well as her co teacher and the children, and just make them seem more real,” Sandra said.
Maggie was driven to keep the shooting front of mind for Uvalde, and for the public at large. “We're going to keep my sister Eva's memory alive for as long as we can, and the children and Miss Irma and her husband as well,” Maggie said, fighting back tears.
Sandra is also a teacher. She looked hard to find meaning in the way that it all played out in Uvalde. “Behind all this, there's a reason, which is gun violence. And I know that's a different topic on all on its own, but part of the reason why we're here is for that to put it in people's faces and to know that this didn't just happen, there was a very specific reason, which is the gun violence, and we need to keep fighting and trying to make a difference for gun reform,” she said.
As people passed by the ofrenda, many wiped away tears as they studied the children’s photos.
Día De Los Muertos has definitely evolved in recent times, and San Antonio has embraced the celebration, making this one of the largest events of its kind in the nation. Each ofrenda narrowed that scale down to a human-sized one — one of love, loss and longing.
