On November 9 and 10, the Harbourfront Centre hosted their annual Day of the Dead celebration in collaboration with the Consulate General of Mexico in Toronto.
Hundreds of people came to participate in the festival, which included altars to the dead, music, folkloric dance, films, children’s workshops and stalls selling food and handicrafts.
Community groups and people interested in Mexican traditions created altars dedicated to the composer Francisco Gabilondo Soler, “Cri-cri”; Gilberto Hernández , the founder of Alianza Mexicana; the musician Billy Bryans; and the artist Arlan Londoño.
The Consulate General dedicated its altar to the Mexican lithographer, illustrater and caricaturist José Guadalupe Posada. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Posada’s death.
The altar displayed copies of Posada’s engravings, such as the famous “Catrina,” as well as two large paper sculptures entitled “Las dos Fridas” (The Two Fridas), made by artist Sergio Otero. Otero has exhibited his work at the Georges Pompidou Museum of Modern Art in Paris, France (1989), the Expo in Seville, Spain (1992), and at Europalia, Brussels, Belgium (1993) among other sites around the world.
As part of the homage to Posada, Chicago-based art historian and curator Dr. Diane Miliotes gave a talk entitled “Calaveras, Catrinas and Dandies: José Guadalupe Posada and his Legacy.” Dr. Miliotes specialises in Mexican popular culture.
For the first time this year, in addition to the altars made by the Mexican community and the Consulate, the Harbourfront Centre placed a public altar to the dead in Ontario Square.
The celebration included performances by the Mexican Folkloric Dance Company, Ballet Folklórico Puro México, and by the Mariachi group México Amigo.
The musical lineup featured the Toronto debut of Mamselle Ruiz, a Montreal-based singer with Mexican roots.
There was also a screening of the film “Calling Home the Dead: Día de los Muertos,” directed by Jim Hills, and short films about the Day of the Dead festival in Mexico.
At the children’s workshops, families learned to make papel picado (perforated tissue paper), flores de cempasuchitl (paper marigold flowers) and skeleton masks, and there were storytelling and children’s dance activities.
Also at the celebration were vendors selling Mexican food, as well as handicrafts from various regions of Mexico, and silver jewelry.
Staff from the Consulate General gave out pieces of pan de muerto (bread of the dead) on both days of the festival.
For another year, the Mexican Day of the Dead - a tradition which has been passed down from generation to generation - was shared with a multicultural audience, and visitors were amazed by this remarkable example of Mexican popular culture.