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In the 1970s, secular Day of the Dead celebrations were initiated in the United States as a way to communicate messages of Chicano identity. As the US Latino community became more ethnically diverse in the 1980s and 1990s, new Latino populations participated in these public festivities, creating pan-Latino celebrations. At the same time, non-Latinos began to embrace Day of the Dead as an alternative way to remember the departed. The observance of the holiday in new ways and by new groups of people has sparked negotiations around ownership and meaning, illustrating that hybridity and authenticity are complexly related rather than oppositional concepts.
Introduction
WHILE ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL globalization occur with growing velocity, transculturalism, or the shaping of cultures by interactions with other cultures, is alternately praised and lamented, raising questions about the meaning, authenticity, and ownership of cultural practices. Day of the Dead/El Día de los Muertos, one of the most widely observed Latino celebrations in the United States, exemplifies these dynamics. As part of multicultural educational curricula in schools and universities and the subject of annual exhibits in museums, art galleries, and community centers across the country, the celebration attracts many thousands of participants each year. Yet, all this is relatively recent. Before the 1970s, the celebration as we know it was not widely observed in the United States. Most Mexican Americans knew little about Mexico's Indigenous Día de los Muertos practices, observing, instead, popular Catholic All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day rituals. After providing a brief history of Day of the Dead in Latin America, this paper will discuss the birth and growth of secular Día de los Muertos celebrations in the United States-"invented traditions" that emerged as a key expression of the Chicano1 Movement.
Blossoming in California and the American Southwest in the 1970s-a time of widespread social justice activism by disenfranchised populations throughout the United States and the world-the Chicano movement comprised young Mexican American artists and intellectuals who were inspired by black civil rights activism, the American Indian movement, the women's liberation movement, and the anti-Vietnam war movement. The Chicano movement addressed a broad cross section of issues affecting the Mexican American community, including farm workers' rights, Native American land rights, educational opportunities, and voting and political rights....