El Dia de los Muertos, or The Day of the Dead, is coming to Nacogdoches next week by way of an Aztec dance group who will be traveling to town from Mexico City.
The group, known as Cemanahuac Chicahuac, will be in East Texas for nearly a week visiting Houston and Conroe, and the group will be in Nacogdoches Monday, Nov. 2 — the day celebrated throughout Latin America and the Caribbean as The Day of the Dead.
Throughout Monday, the dancers and Stephen F. Austin State University faculty will host an interactive experience at the Pineywoods Native Plant Center located along Raguet Street, just north of the SFA campus. The ceremonial Aztec dance will take place at 6 p.m., but leading up to the finale, students from area schools and the university will be visiting the sacred site as it is being prepared using ancient traditional ways.
Following the ceremonial Day of the Dead dance will be poetry readings that will last into the evening. Tamberly Conway, who is a doctoral research assistant in the Arthur Temple College of Forestry at SFA and also works for the U.S. Forest Service, described the Day of the Dead as "memorial service" to pay respect for those who no longer walk amongst the living.
The event is the result of collaboration between educators at SFA and the U.S. Forest Service's Urban/Rural Connections Program. Through hands-on and ears-wide-open educational experiences, participants will learn about the links between culture, art and nature.
"When we're able to connect people back to nature through new and exciting ways, often that connection holds true," said Conway. "Sometimes people lose sight of their own culture and lose sight of nature. So in trying to reconnect these relationships, we've found that by working through this group, it's been very inspirational."
It's inspirational to not only Latino communities, "but because we do have a large Latino population here in Texas, we think it's also important that other people know and understand their background and how really connected the Hispanic culture is to nature," she added.
Like Halloween, which derived from an ancient Celtic holiday celebrated in present day Ireland and Scotland, The Day of the Dead is a fusion of indigenous Aztec traditions and the Catholic faith that Spanish conquistadors brought with them to Mexico nearly 500 years ago.
Conway said that because today's younger generation is so plugged into technology and out of touch with things like nature walks and canoe trips , by having this event, parents and their children will have a good excuse to get back to nature.
"We think its really important to do this kind of event, because nowadays you have a lot of kids inside the house playing video games, watching T.V. or sitting at the computer, and you don't see children out in nature as much as you did just a few years ago," she said, adding that research has attributed diseases like Type II Diabetes in children to a lack of exposure to the outdoors and outdoor activities.
Several community businesses, particularly local Latino-owned businesses, have offered their support in the form of food and services for the event, Conway said.
