New Haven Independent

Maza was taking part in The Day of the Dead celebration Sunday night at St. Rose of Lima Church.

Dia de los Muertos is one of the largest holidays of the year in Mexico, a time when the dead are remembered and honored. After evening mass on Sunday night, families from the Mexican city of Tlaxcala, the hometown of many of St. Rose’s parishioners, transformed a front corner of the church into an area of colorful celebration and commemoration.

Altars were set up below a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe and piled high with all kinds of fruits and candies, as well as freshly-made tamales, open bags of peanuts and chips, and open bottles of Coca-Cola and Modelo Especial, a Mexican beer. This is the second year that St Rose has hosted the day of the dead altars.

Augustin Saucedo (pictured) and Florencio Maza explained the significance of some of the items on the white tables. Holding one of the many round loaves of bread, Saucedo said, “This is called Pan de Muertos. It’s a special bread made only on Dia de Muertos.”

Asked about the cross on the floor made out of orange marigold blossoms, Maza said that this flower is known as Flor de Muertos, or Flower of the Dead, and is used especially on the holiday. The bottles of beer and soda were opened, said Maza, for the dead who are coming to the altars.

Among the bouquets of bright flowers and colorful fruit, there were framed pictures of saints and deceased relatives. Maza (at left in picture) said that he was going to bring a picture of his cousin Filiberto Maza to place on the altar. Filiberto was shot and killed along with a woman in June in downtown New Haven. The murder is still unsolved. “It was a tragedy,” said Father Jim Manship (at right in picture), minister of St. Rose.

Father Manship described the altars as a “a point of contact with the transcendent.” “Through the altars the dead are not so distant from us,” said Father Manship.

Father Manship placed his hand on the frame of a picture of a smiling young man, whose face was drawn next to the image of a racing car. “This is the first person I buried here at St Rose,” said Father Manship. “He drowned in a river.”

Manship said that another group of parishioners was remembering a relative of theirs who recently died in Arizona while trying to cross from Mexico to the United States. His body was discovered in the desert, several weeks after he had died. St. Rose recently held a funeral for him, after which his body was returned to Mexico.

Father Manship said that for his Mexican parishioners, “It is so important to be buried in Mexican soil, en la tierra Mexicana.” They are worried that in the United States there will be no one to tend their grave.

Dia de los Muertos celebrations at St. Rose are true to those in Mexico, said Maza. “Everything here [on these altars] is the same as in Mexico.” But Maza said that it is more difficult to celebrate here in the United States because there is less time. “In Mexico we would have a holiday of two or three days,” said Maza. There would be altars everywhere in Mexico, not just in one corner of the church, said Maza.

The altars will be dismantled on Friday, and the food will be distributed among the parishioners.