Day Of The Dead Honors Murdered Women

Dressed in floral crowns, face paint, and brightly patterned woven shawls, two dozen immigrant rights activists marched through the streets of Fair Haven to remember Lizzbeth Alemán-Popoca and other local missing and murdered women.

That parade-turned-protest took place Monday night in celebration of the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead.

The event was organized by the Semilla Collective, and saw marchers bundled up in the late fall cold walk from Quinnipiac River Park on Front Street to Chapel Street, Ferry Street, Grand Avenue, and Blatchley Avenue, before winding their way in the dark back over to the parade’s riverfront starting spot. 

The parade’s participants walked in the middle of the street — often taking up both lanes of traffic — behind a flat-bed pickup truck decorated with a sunflower-strewn altar to Alemán-Popoca. 

A 27-year-old Mexican immigrant, young mother, and East Haven resident, Alemán-Popoca was found dead in mid-July by a dumpster outside of a Branford restaurant. A medical examiner subsequently determined that she died as a result of “‘homicidal asphyxia.”

Yaneth Alemán (pictured at left), 24, who lives in New Haven and who immigrated to the United States with her older sister Lizzbeth over a decade ago, said that she turned out to Monday’s parade to keep the public’s eye focused on Alemán-Popoca’s still-unsolved murder.

“After four months, she still hasn’t received justice,” Alemán said. ​“To have someone so close .. it’s not easy to deal with.”

She said that the Day of the Dead is traditionally a time to remember, mourn, and celebrate the lives of those who have recently passed away. Though only three years her junior, Alemán said that she looked up to her older sister as if she was her mother.

“She took care of me,” she said.

Ben Haldeman, who joined Alemán in carrying a cloth banner decorated with sunflowers and a picture of Alemán-Popoca, said he showed up to Monday’s parade because ​“people do not treat violence against women with the gravity it deserves, particularly when those affected are not white.”

Semilla Collective organizer Vanesa Suarez (pictured), who led the march, said that that theme — of taking seriously the lives and deaths of women who have been disappeared, murdered, and then forgotten — was the driving force behind the Day of the Dead event.

“We’re going to honor our sisters because while the rest of the world is very quick to forget them and erase them, we will not.”

Marching through Fair Haven to the sounds of a bilingual ​“feminist soundtrack” playing from the pickup truck that carried Alemán-Popoca’s altar, the parade made several stops at intersections where New Haven women have been murdered, died, or otherwise gone missing in recent years.

At Ferry Street and Exchange Street, they paid homage to recently deceased New Haven sex workers Inez Perez and Leila Rivera.

At Ferry Street and Grand Avenue, organizer Fatima Rojas (pictured) led the group in a group sing-along to the anti-femicide anthem Canción Sin Miedo.

And at Grand and Blatchley Avenue outside of the school formerly named Christopher Columbus Academy, fellow activist Norm Clement connected a history of colonization and genocide with the present endurance of violence against women.

“We need to dismantle patriarchy and we need to do it soon,” he said, ​“because our sisters, our mothers, our daughters, our granddaughters are the ones that are feeling the brunt of all this violence.”

Suarez (pictured) agreed. She called for justice for Lizzbeth (“Presente!” the crowd called back, every time Suarez said her name.) And she called for an end to domestic abuse.

“It is not fair that because I was born a woman, because we were born women, that we have to face so much violence and we have to accept it. It has been normalized. The killing, the beating, the raping, the disappearing, the massacre, the violence on women has been normalized. And it is not ok.”

Suarez said that the parade took over the streets of Fair Haven Monday night to let the neighborhood, and the broader public know, that such violence against women can no longer be taken for granted as inevitable.

“We do not need more dead sisters,” she concluded. ​“What we need is the violence to end. And what we need is justice for Lizzbeth.”

Click on the Facebook Live videos below to watch excerpts from Monday night’s parade.