CDC hosts large Día de los Muertos celebration Monday night

While many students celebrated Halloween on Oct. 31, others celebrated Día de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, a popular holiday in Mexico, Latin America and parts of the United States that celebrate the lives of deceased family members.

USD’s Día de los Muertos celebration was organized by the Center for Diversity & Community, Latino Student Organization and Sigma Delta Pi. The CDC office in the MUC was the site of Monday’s celebration, and the room was completely packed for much of the event.

Senior Cristobal Francisquez, president of LaSO, organized last year’s event and said they received additional support when planning this year’s celebration.

“The CDC and Sigma Delta Pi helped to make this event bigger than last year’s,” Francisquez said. “Day of the Dead is meant to celebrate ancestors who have passed on to the afterlife.”

Francisquez said that during Día de los Muertos, many celebrants eat favorite dishes of their ancestors to pay respects to them.

The event featured Latin music and Mexican food, provided by the La Juanita restaurant located in Sioux City. The food included steak tacos with cilantro and onions, hot sauce and carrots. Pan de muerto (bread of the dead) was also served.

A short presentation started the event, detailing the origins and traditions of the holiday.

“The holiday started in Mexico and spread to other countries, including the U.S.,” Francisquez said. “It takes place around All Saints’ Day, so there are some Christian elements in the holiday.”

The presentation described some traditions, including the making of sugar skulls, or calaveras in Spanish, which represent the dead and altars to remember ancestors.

Students were encouraged to make their own sugar calaveras out of plastic beads.

Lena Tran, intercultural programming coordinator for the CDC, said planning for the event began at the beginning of September.

“We put in a lot of time and effort to put on the event,” Tran said. “We knew we would do it last year, but it really ramped up in these last two months.”

Tran said learning about the culture surrounding the holiday was important.

“We want students to be engaged and not just come here and sa,y ‘Oh, I just had some food,’” she said. “We want them to partake in the bigger traditions of celebration.”

Sophomore Lucas Lund, president of Sigma Delta Pi, the national collegiate Hispanic honor society, wanted to reinvigorate the society’s participation in the community.

“We wanted to put on cultural events to help student learn about the Hispanic traditions,” Lund said.

Lund said he felt the event went very well.

“I hope this becomes a mainstay every year,” he said. “People really seem to enjoy it and next year we can fine tune details to make the event even more enjoyable.”

After the event, Francisquez said it was a great success, with such a large crowd gathered in the CDC to celebrate.

“We were only expecting 50 or so people,” he said. “We had well over 100 come to celebrate with us.”

The line for the food wrapped along the wall to the outside and the CDC was forced to add more tables outside of the room.

“We hope we can host the event in the MUC ballroom next year,” Tran said. “If we keep expanding like this, we may have to go even bigger!”