Against the backdrop of Mexican folk music, Coltrane Lounge bustled last Saturday with the chatter of community members, Middlebury students and faculty as they celebrated Dia de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead. Children focused intensely as they decorated traditional sugar skulls with red, blue and yellow icing, while students helped with facepainting designs on attendees. Still other students and community participants came together in a circle to play lotería, a Mexican party game similar to bingo.
The student organization Juntos, which works to address the social and political injustices faced by the migrant farmworker community in Vermont, hosted the Dia de los Muertos event this past Saturday. The event brought together members of the local Latino community in celebration of the Mexican tradition. Although the event took place on campus, it was mainly intended for the migrant community, rooted in this tradition, to celebrate the connections between life and death.
“The [Dia de los Muertos] event celebrates the dead and brings them back to life, in a sense,” said Robert Zarate-Morales ’17, office manager of Juntos. “This event is aimed for community members rather than for the Middlebury student body as a whole, because [the Latino community members] are the ones who hold on to these traditions. We’d like to provide a space for them to continue these traditions.”
Although the event has occurred at the Vermont Folklife Center in the town of Middlebury in the past, the location has transitioned to the College this year as the Folklife Center was unable to host the event.
“All the arrangements for the Dia de los Muertos were done by students,” said Jessica Gutierrez ’17, compañeros coordinator of Juntos. “Latino community members also collaborated with food prep and altar prep and many of them brought traditional items for the altar.”
Of the pieces incorporated into the celebration, the altar is at the core as a body through which those who have passed may return and partake in the celebration with their loved ones.
Board members and volunteers from Juntos set up the altar in Coltrane with electronic candles, “bread of the dead” and “papel picado,” or paper cutouts, alongside other motifs signifying life and death. Here, community members brought with them photos of those they would like to remember, as well as candy, fruits and other tokens that those who had passed would enjoy.
Although the altar was the centerpiece of the space, attendees wandered around, enjoying each other’s conversation and company. The celebration drew many migrant workers and their families to the College. College students, adults and children alike socialized over face-painting, coloring, lotería, sugar skulls, tamales, churros and arroz con leche that were met with warm reception across all ages.
“My favorite part of the event was the meal, because they serve traditional Hispanic dishes that aren’t typically served here,” said Amy Lorn ’19, a volunteer with Juntos. “I was also looking forward to see how it all comes together, because usually, my experience with day of the dead is people just taking some time to have a shrine rather than a whole celebration around it, so it was an interesting change to see this celebration.”
While the event was significant to many College students, some for a bit of home and others for the window it provided into a different culture, the Juntos board planned the Dia de los Muertos celebration with the larger Latino migrant community in mind.
“Given the multifaceted barriers that the Latino migrant community faces here, there are very few gatherings in which the community is allowed to be just that, a Latino community – not a worker community nor a migrant community, nor a community that is vulnerable to facing threats of deportation on a daily basis,” Gutierrez said.
Although the migrant farmworker population makes up a notable portion of Vermont’s demographics, Zarate-Morales said, as a group they are largely voiceless in discussions of race and immigration. He said members of the community suffer from difficulties with communication, transportation and are even subject to intentional targeting from groups such as the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE), which instills a fear that is present in daily actions as simple as visiting a grocery store.
While these issues may seem removed to those within the College community, Zarate-Morales highlights points of intersection between the College and the migrant farmworker community, the most prominent being the dairy industry.
“A lot of (the farmworkers’) professions are milking cows,” he said. “That milk is part of the dairy industry, which we get milk, ice-cream and yogurt from. Because the industry is so prominent in Vermont, we consume a large part of these products and it’s important to acknowledge where that food comes from and who does that labor.”
Part of Juntos’ work as a student organization is to raise awareness of the migrant farmworker community that exists so close to the College and of the issues they face in hopes of creating both solidarity and more resources.
“It’s so easy to ignore that our neighbors are consistently faced with challenges and hold a large amount of fear and limitations on rights every human being is entitled to,” Zarate-Morales said. “With this event, we wanted to create that connection for students to realize that these people are just like us – we all experience life and death, and we all know of people who have these experiences.”
The celebration was a success in those respects. The space became a comfortable one in which community members, students and faculty members alike broke out of their prescribed groups and interacted with one another.
“Our hopes for this event were to have a balanced turnout between the Middlebury students, staff and community members,” Gutierrez said. “As we hoped, we were also able to create a genuine, casual setting – even almost a family-like vibe. Everyone had an amazing time.”
Students interested in getting involved in Juntos can email juntos@middlebury.edu for more information and volunteer opportunities.
