The Museum at Texas Tech hosted its annual Día De Los Muertos event on Sunday to invite the Lubbock community to take part in the Mexican holiday to remember and honor the dead.
“Anyone could participate, and you don’t have to be Mexican, you don’t have to be Hispanic,” said Mary Robles, a second-year museum sciences graduate student from San Antonio. “It’s just a great way to connect with loved ones who have passed, pets who have passed and just remember them.”
Robles, an intern at the Museum at Tech, was put in charge of organizing the event this year and said it was an amazing time seeing everyone celebrate the Hispanic tradition.
She said the event has taken place annually for roughly 15 years and is intended to connect Tech students and Lubbock with the local Hispanic community.
“I think one of the big things about museums is outreach, and using our resources as a museum to connect with the community, and because we have a big Hispanic population, that’s kind of why we started doing this event,” Robles said.
Activities at the event included live performances from Mariachi Los Matadores, Coronado Mariachi Band and Lubbock High School Folklorico dancers. Also, attendees were invited to take part in a community ofrenda, where pictures of loved ones who passed away could be placed to remember them.
Jada Moreno, a first-year music education and vocal major at South Plains College from Lubbock, is a member of Mariachi Los Matadores. She said performing at the event was an amazing way for her to connect with both her heritage and passed loved ones.
“It’s a learning thing, too, even for me, and I’m a part of the culture, and I’m still learning,” Moreno said. “I think it’s wonderful. It’s a learning lesson in a way.”
She said the museum hosting Día De Los Muertos is a great way to connect other people with the Mexican holiday’s focus on keeping the memories of loved ones alive, even if they are no longer living.
“At events like this, it keeps celebration alive, keeps the culture alive and everything,” Moreno said.
Christopher Valdez, a third-year history major from Anson, said he wanted to attend the event to learn more about the holiday’s traditions. He said Día De Los Muertos is also a way for him to celebrate and participate in his Hispanic culture.
“This was important and intimate for me because this is an extension of my own culture, of who I am,” Valdez said. “Being able to see it represented so widely and celebrated so widely by so many different types of people definitely shows the amount of value that the people here at the university and the university itself places in events like this.”
Growing up, Valdez said he remembers dressing up and painting his face as a skull to celebrate the holiday, and he appreciates Tech for holding events like these. He said someone can’t fully recognize a university as a whole until it recognizes all students and backgrounds.
“I think that when you represent Día De Los Muertos for the Hispanic community, you represent a part of Texas Tech, and Texas Tech as a whole,” Valdez said.