What’s it like to “celebrate” the dead? That’s the concept of Dia de los Muertos, a Mexican holiday devoted to the festive commemoration loved ones who have died –and the resurrection of their memories.

Puente helps the South Coast community remember its departed loved ones by presenting an entire month’s worth of Dia de los Muertos-themed art projects in October. The month culminated in a big gathering on October 24 where people decorated individual sugar skulls, using their own sense of whimsy. Many of the sugar skulls were displayed on Puente’s community altar on October 31, at the final Pescadero Grown! Farmers’ Market.

As evening fell on Pescadero, more than 60 locals sat at long tables draped with paper in the multipurpose room at Pescadero Elementary – mostly women and children. The room buzzed with happy conversation as budding artists added glass gems, glitter flakes, shiny paper, sparkles, and every-color Day-Glo icing to their sugar skulls.

Though the premise of the holiday is slightly sad, the art is a joyful pursuit, said Irma Rodriguez, a Pescadero resident who brought her two daughters with her. Rodriguez took on a look of intense concentration as she applied a big orange pair of glasses to her sugar skull, and a stylized pink flower on top.

She explained that the skull would honor her late mother and father.

“It’s sad because they’re gone, but the happy part is remembering them,” she said with a smile.

Rodriguez said the skull would be displayed on her home altar along with some of her parents’ favorite foods, including hot chocolate, a tamale, a banana, some water and a number of other items that summon warm memories.

Learning a new tradition

In Mexico, Day of the Dead is actually stretches over three days, from October 31 (All Hallows’ Eve) to November 2 (All Souls’ Day).

Some locals are familiar with the holiday traditions from growing up in Mexico. But it’s often new to their children, who were born on the South Coast.

Johnny and Wendy Lopez got to make their first sugar skulls this year, and learn about Mexican culture at the same time. Johnny, 12, made a ‘man at the beach’ with yellow sunglasses, a mustache and a little hat made out of foil. Wendy, 8, made a princess with brightly colored flowers adorning her brow.

Said Wendy, “I’m going to keep it for a year, hidden in the closet. I’m going to eat it when I’m in the third grade. It’s going to be delicious.” Wendy’s mother Veronica wasn’t too sure about that.

The art party was one of four free weekly art sessions organized by Puente’s energetic Youth Program Associate, Alejandra Ortega. She staged earlier events for locals to paint decorative platters and enjoy adding color and collage to ‘memory boxes’ – some in the shape of little coffins, in keeping with the Day of the Dead.

Artist and Puente staffer Alejandra Ortega

Art is therapeutic as well as fun, Ortega believes. Puente has previously used art projects and other group bonding exercises to combat the symptoms of maternal depression, which can crop up anytime, but are a particular concern in communities where women live in rural isolated housing. Depression also affects Latina teenagers at a higher rate than other groups.

“At least for the time that people are here, they forget about whatever else is going on their lives,” said Ortega.

A deeper meaning

Ortega devotes more than 30 hours a week to organizing each art project. In the case of the sugar skulls, this involved molding more than 100 pounds of refined sugar into 120 skulls and preparing 28 pounds of icing, which she made herself with confectioner’s sugar and coloring gels.

Ortega has a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and dreams of becoming a full-time art teacher. This is her third year of work on Dia de los Muertos, and the first year she included children as well as adults in the decorating parties. It added a new, slightly more chaotic dimension, but she liked it.

“Everyone’s skills are different, but they’re great. What everyone made is really unique.”

Some skulls had gold teeth, others tiaras. Each one was an expression of creativity and love – in honor of the people who are missing all the fun.

Those memories are what gives the project its deeper meaning, said Ortega.

“We want to know people’s lives, their traditions – and to find out who their project is dedicated to.”

The program was supported by the Bella Vista Foundation and the San Francisco Foundation Faiths Project.

Click here for more Dia de los Muertos photos.

For some, the men working in the fields around Pescadero are part of the scenery. But when Laura Franco sees them, she thinks of her family.

“I think: that could be my aunt, that could be my dad, my grandmother. I see the struggles that people go through and I know that’s what my family went through. It strikes at my heart,” she says.

Many people know Laura as a hardworking attorney who splits long workweeks between San Francisco and Palo Alto. They know she is powerful and passionate. Sometimes they know her as the vice president of Puente’s Board of Directors, a position she took on shortly after joining the Board last year. She is also a monthly Puente donor.

Laura, and her son, Rowan

Some Pescadero students know her as the confident woman in the gray business suit who spoke to their grade about the importance of getting a college degree: if I could do it, she told them, you can do it, too.

To really know Laura is to know that she and her sister, Lisa, were the first of their family – on either side – to go to college. And that their parents were the ones who pushed them.

It is to know that her father, Manuel, grew up in Mexico, moved to Fort Bragg, and made his way in a new country with a third grade education – first as a logger, then as a self-taught carpenter.  Laura’s mother Barbara had a high school education and did office work. But when it came time for their girls to go to college, there was never any question.

Manuel and Barbara weren’t able to help Laura and Lisa with questions of where to enroll, what to study or how to pay for it all. But the girls figured it out. Today, both sisters are attorneys. Laura attended University of California, Berkeley, as an undergraduate student, and received her Masters in Public Policy at Harvard, simultaneously with a law degree at Berkeley.  Law School. She received full tuition scholarships; but no living stipend.

“For some reason God gave me parents with an open worldview. They understood the importance of an education. They didn’t shelter us,” Laura says.

Laura, with her father, Manuel

The college recruiter

If it was possible for her father to imagine his daughters finishing college, why doesn’t it work that way for other families? That’s a question Laura asks herself when she meets some parents – both Latino and Anglo – who didn’t go to college and see no reason for their children to go, either.

“If I could figure it out and spread it around I would. It would do so much to break the cycle of poverty,” Laura says.

Of all of Puente’s youth-based work, Laura most strongly supports Puente’s efforts to bridge the gap between high school and college for students whose parents never got that far. She speaks to students at Pescadero and La Honda schools, and makes a point of chatting one-on-one with students and sometimes their parents as well.

“I tell the parents, ‘Just because you didn’t go to school doesn’t mean your kids won’t succeed. ‘And I tell the kids, ‘Just because your parents didn’t finish high school, doesn’t mean they aren’t smart.’

Laura shared the story of her father’s own lack of education and humble upbringing at Puente’s second annual Career Night, an event intended to showcase Latino professionals who were the first in their families to go to college.

She also encourages students to use their personal stories in their college essays and to take full advantage of the academic scholarships and financial aid available to them as minorities and as students from a rural community.

Most of all, she directs them toward Puente, which offers scholarships to youth employees and helps students obtain real-world internships, along with unprecedented access to academic programs at Stanford University.

Puente is also in the midst of an effort to put together an advisory group of attorneys who can help with legal questions from time to time that fall outside the rubric of immigration law: workers’ compensation, estate issues, employee protections.

Puente Executive Director Kerry Lobel says Laura has helped Puente hit all the right notes from the beginning. “Laura brings a unique perspective to the Puente board framed by her personal family experiences and her legal training. Her story means so much to young people and their parents.”

Laura has lived in La Honda for over ten years. Her affiliation with Puente dates back to 2007, when she answered the call to donate bicycles and clothing. She became a student tutor and also helped Puente participants study for their citizenship tests.

“It’s where my heart is,” she says.

To donate to Puente, contact Kerry Lobel at (650) 879-1691 x 144 or klobel@mypuente.org
 You can also donate online at https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/puente?code=Novemberbridge