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CITY & STATE
Joan “Zeta” Zamora
came of age in her native Ja-
lisco, Mexico, cleaning up
and decorating tombstones
with flowers on Day of the
Dead.
So when she learned that
the Florence Library in
South Los Angeles was clos-
ing, she turned the com-
memoration of ancestors
and loved ones who have
died into a tool for protest.
The 36-year-old con-
structed an altar in Grand
Park, which depicted a poli-
tician as Ernesto de la Cruz,
the mariachi villain in the
Pixar Animation Studios
film “Coco.”
“Dia de los Muertos in
Los Angeles has always had
a political element to it,” Za-
mora said.
After the release of
Pixar’s “Coco,” in which an
aspiring guitarist is cast to
the underworld after defying
his Mexican grandmother,
the Day of the Dead aes-
thetic has become especially
ubiquitous, used to peddle
all sorts of products, from
alcohol to lottery scratchers.
The Mexican holiday is also
used to promote an ever-
growing list of events across
Los Angeles County, includ-
ing a bicycle ride in Wilming-
ton and a 5K and health fair
in San Fernando.
Throughout October,
vendors in downtown Los
Angeles unload trucks
chock-full of marigolds. The
flowers, known as cem-
pasúchil, are no longer
shipped from abroad but
grown in Oxnard and San
Diego. Merchants bundle
them up in Korean-language
newspapers, then hand
them over to the thousands
of Angelenos who observe
Day of the Dead.
Come November, they
will adorn altars throughout
the county.
Despite the holiday’s
commodification, for Xó-
chitl Flores-Marcial, a histo-
rian at Cal State Northridge,
it remains an intimate fam-
ily affair, with preparations
beginning months in ad-
vance.
“Our entire life,” she said,
“revolves around memory
and holding on to the teach-
ings of our ancestors.” For
her, using the tradition as a
marketing tool is “historical
erasure.”
“I like to talk about it in
terms of science,” she con-
tinued, “because we often
forget that part when we talk
about how people have ap-
propriated only the things
that look fun and festive and
colorful.”
For instance, she said,
there are several different
varieties of cempasúchil,
and because they contain a
natural insecticide, they are
planted among food crops in
Mexico. This is why her fam-
ily, Zapotecs from the stateof Oaxaca, not only decorate
their altars in L.A. with them
but also make it a point to in-
clude only the highest-qual-
ity corn, beans, chiles and
squash in their tribute, or
ofrenda.
This, said Flores-Mar-
cial, “is ultimately what
we’re celebrating when we’re
honoring our ancestors.
We’re saying, ‘This is what
we’ve harvested from this
knowledge.’ That part, this
knowledge that indigenous
people have, is totally over-
looked when people start
appropriating these sym-
bols.”
Her family’s customs, she
added, “represent just one
example of ancestor wor-
ship.”
“You can find it in the An-
des, too. You can find it in
Guatemala. You can find it
in so many places in the
Americas. It’s not only Mexi-
can,” she said.
Betty Avila, executive di-
rector of Self Help Graphics
& Art in Boyle Heights,
learned about Day of the
Dead as an adult. For her
and her parents, who emi-
grated from the Mexican
state of Zacatecas, “Dia de
los Muertos is very much an
L.A. thing,” she said.
“I think it’s interesting for
my parents to see their kids
really seek out these oppor-
tunities to be further con-
nected with home in Zaca-
tecas and, more broadly
speaking, our Mexican herit-
age,” Avila said.
Moreover, because Avila
learned about the tradition
at Self Help Graphics & Art,
her understanding of it has
always been rooted in politi-
cal activism.
The arts center, she
noted, began celebrating
Day of the Dead shortly after
the Chicano Moratorium, in
which residents of East Los
Angeles took to the streets
to protest the Vietnam War
and the disproportionatenumber of casualties of Mex-
ican descent.
From the beginning, said
Avila said, local artists and
residents have made use of
traditional Day of the Dead
iconography “to bring for-
ward other issues and ideas
that affect the community.”
In the ’70s, for instance, the
East Los Angeles art collec-
tive Asco combined the tra-
dition with performance art
to address “the ways that
they saw community mem-
bers dying all around them.”
In its archives, the arts cen-
ter preserves a photograph
of the event, in which mem-
bers of the collective dressed
not only as skeletons but
also as a pill, a switchblade
and a syringe.
Today, Day of the Dead at
Self Help Graphics & Art
maintains its activist roots,
as exemplified by the altars
in this year’s gallery exhib-
ition. Among them is one
created by the center’s
youth committee, which
commemorates children
who have died while at-
tempting to cross the U.S.-
Mexico border or in the cus-
tody of immigration offi-
cials.
In addition to traditional
elements such as candles
and cempasúchil, the youth
committee’s altar includes
candy and stuffed animals.
These elements, said Karla
Jacome, a student at Los
Angeles Trade-Technical
College and East L.A. Col-
lege, represent the children
who lost their lives. Because
the items featured in the al-
tar are also an ofrenda, they
are meant to “give the chil-
dren some comfort.”
“I really hope that these
children, who passed in such
difficult ways, feel how loved
they are,” Jacome said.
The altar, which displays
portraits of migrant chil-
dren who died, also includes
a gallon of water, where the
words “Suerte en su camino”(Good luck on your journey)
are written in permanent
marker.
This message, Jacome
said, speaks both to the
“physical journey from the
children’s home countries to
the United States, as well as
from life to death.”
The jug, she added, is also
a form of protest, pointing to
the prosecution of individu-
als who provided water to
migrants trying to survive in
the desert.
The youth committee’s
installation also invites com-
munity members to write
messages to the dead chil-
dren on paper fish, which are
then deposited in a river
made of blue cloth that runs
along the altar. One of the
messages reads, in Spanish:
“Beautiful little angels, you
will not be forgotten. May
you rest in peace.”
On any given Saturday in
October, the mural-laden
building in Boyle Heights
can be found teeming with
friends and multiple genera-
tions of family members, in-
cluding pets.
Some of the crafts are in-
corporated into the arts cen-
ter’s community altar, a ma-
jestic, multi-tiered piece by
master altarista Ofelia
Esparza. It includes framed
photographs of Toni
Morrison, Rep. Elijah
Cummings and local rapper
and community activist
Nipsey Hussle, all of whom
died this year.
Many of those who par-
ticipate in the Self Help
Graphic & Arts’ weekend
workshops take their work
home. Often, they say they
plan to make altars of their
own.
The point, she said, is to
bring the community to-
gether, to get people talking
about loved ones who have
died. The “ability to share
out that loss publicly,” she
added, “is also part of the
healing.”A DAY OF THE DEADaltar at Self Help Graphics & Art in Boyle Heights. Other altars will be adorned throughout L.A. County.Photographs byMichael Owen BakerFor The TimesWhen the activism is enlivened
By Julia BarajasKRISTENJohannesen, Olivia Ramos and her mother, Dora Magaña, work on papier-mache skulls for Day of
the Dead at Self Help Graphics. Many who participate in the art center’s workshops take their work home.For many Angelenos,
Day of the Dead is atradition imbued with
a political element.
Actress Lori Loughlin
and her husband, J.
Mossimo Giannulli, pleaded
not guilty Friday to new
bribery charges filed in the
college admissions scandal,
according to documents
filed in federal court.
Loughlin and Giannulli, a
fashion designer, were
among 11 parents charged
last week in an indictment
returned by a grand jury in
Boston, which alleges they
conspired with William
“Rick” Singer, a Newport
Beach consultant, to com-
mit not just fraud and mon-
ey laundering, but federal
program bribery as well to
secure their children’s fraud-
ulent admissions to USC.
Prosecutors had warned
defendants they would face
more charges if they didn’t
plead guilty. Those parents
are now charged with con-
spiring to commit fraud,
money laundering and fed-
eral program bribery.
The indictments contain
details of Singer’s interac-
tions with parents that wer-
en’t previously known. In the
case of Loughlin and Gian-
nulli, the indictment says,
the fashion designer
emailed his accountant in
April 2017 to explain a
$200,000 invoice from Singer.
The couple paid $250,
in all to misrepresent their
older daughter as a re-
cruited coxswain and bribe
Donna Heinel, a former USC
athletics official, to slip her
into the school, prosecutors
allege.
“Good news my daughter
... is in [U]SC,” Giannulli
wrote to his accountant, ac-
cording to the indictment.
“Bad is I had to work the sys-
tem.”
Actress
keeps
up fight
in court
Lori Loughlin and her
husband plead not
guilty to new charges
in admissions scandal.
By Matthew Ormseth
Three burglary suspects
were killed and a fourth was
in critical condition after the
car they were in overturned
during a police pursuit that
ended in Echo Park early
Friday, police said.
Los Angeles Police De-
partment officers were pa-
trolling the area of Sunset
Boulevard and Lemoyne
Street when they heard a
window breaking at a nearby
business. They saw what ap-
peared to be a smash-and-
grab burglary taking place,
Officer Drake Madison said.
There were multiple peo-
ple and at least two vehicles
in front of the business at the
time. The group fled and of-
ficers began pursuing one of
the cars onto the north-
bound 101 Freeway. Police
briefly lost sight of the vehi-
cle as it exited the freeway on
the Rampart Boulevard off-
ramp. When officers found
the vehicle again, they saw
that the car had overturned,
Madison said.
Firefighters worked to
free the four people, ranging
from 20 to 30 years old, from
the wrecked car. Three were
pronounced dead at the
scene. A fourth person was
taken to a hospital, said
Margaret Stewart, a spokes-
woman for the Los Angeles
Fire Department.
Their names were not im-
mediately provided.
The Rampart Boulevard
offramp and onramp onto
the 101 Freeway were closed
as police investigated the
crash.
Crash
kills 3
suspects
By Hannah Fry
After a deadly wildfire
ripped through his commu-
nity last month, a Calimesa
homeowner is suing a waste
company whose truck
dumped a load of burning
trash on the side of the road
that sparked the Sandal-
wood fire.
In a lawsuit filed this
week, Bruce Maxwell, a resi-
dent at the Villa Calimesa
Mobile Home Park, claims
that CR&R Inc. put its busi-
ness interests ahead of pub-
lic safety when one of its driv-
ers dumped his load after it
caught fire Oct. 10.
According to the lawsuit,
a passerby pleaded with the
driver not to unload the
smoldering trash because of
strong winds that could
spread a fire. The blaze
burned about 1,000 acres,
destroying at least 76 homes
and killing two women.
Lois Arvickson, 89, and
Hannah Labelle, 61, died in-
side their mobile homes, ac-
cording to Riverside County
coroner’s officials. At the
time, fire warnings were in
place in Calimesa and
throughout the county due
to dry, windy conditions.
Neither Maxwell nor
CR&R could immediately
be reached for comment Fri-
day.The Associated Press
contributed to this report.Waste
firm sued
over fire
By Alejandra
Reyes-Velarde