Community members gathered at Lawrence’s Día de Muertos event Saturday evening to remember and celebrate loved ones who have passed, humans and animals alike.
The annual event is hosted by Somos Lawrence and Lawrence Percolator. The Lawrence Humane Society partnered with the organizations for this year’s event, which had a special focus on honoring non-human companions — pets who have passed.
Dozens of community members, including students of all ages, have come together for a series of workshops throughout the past two weeks to create the decorations for the ofrendas, or altars, that honor the dead.
The work was on display at the community celebration Saturday at John Taylor Park in North Lawrence, which also included food and drink, music, facepainting and a feeling of warmth and unity as people viewed the tributes to those who have died.
“Somos Lawrence,” which translates to “We are Lawrence,” is a volunteer organization that advocates for non-English speakers and specifically Spanish-speaking community members.
“More recently, people have been asking us to get passports for their kids, dual citizenship, just in case deportation happens,” said Isa Carttar, a community liaison with Somos Lawrence.
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Maddie Lockett, social worker with the Lawrence Humane Society, volunteers with Somos Lawrence as a translator to help people access social services. She and her fiance display their family ofrenda each year. Last year, she had a table for pets, as well.
“So many times people want to honor their animals, and we didn’t have really a venue,” said Araceli Masterson-Algar, one of the founders of Somos Lawrence and a professor at KU.
Including pets also helps include young children in the customs, as oftentimes kids learn about death through their pets, Masterson-Algar said.
The event’s theme extended beyond remembering pets who have passed, however.
“More than that, we’re kind of looking into the ways that immigrants have been dehumanized specifically by this (federal) administration,” Carttar said. “… We’re looking at ways that humans are dehumanized, and animals are humanized a little bit.”
Lockett said the annual event has brought communities together in Lawrence.
“Every single year we’ve had this event, I feel like I see more and more new faces come, so it’s been really, really cool just to see people who are curious about Día de Muertos,” she said.
This year’s event was supported in part by a grant from the Douglas County Heritage Conservation Council’s new Heritage Events and Celebration Fund program and funds raised through Somos Unidos, a fundraiser hosted by Danielsan Electric and Lawrence Percolator.
The funds support the cost to bring professional artists to Lawrence to lead the creation of the decorations for the main ofrendas: Juan Hernández Rodríguez, who is a maestro cartonero, or paper handcraft artist, and Tonatiuh Hernández Pacheco, an artist and designer. The father-son duo are from the central Mexican state of Guanajuato.
Hernández Rodríguez said that as a representative of Mexico, it’s an honor and a big responsibility to do this work with people from so many different cultural backgrounds.
“How do you do things with people that haven’t grown up with that tradition so that they will be able to feel what people who do celebrate this tradition feel?” he said, with Masterson-Algar translating.
Our loved ones don’t die until we forget them, Hernández Pacheco, a fourth-generation artist, said.
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Nathan Kramer (he/him), a multimedia student journalist for The Lawrence Times since August 2024, is a senior at Free State High School. He is also a news photo editor for Free State’s student publication, where he works as a videographer, photographer and motion designer. See more of his work for the Times here.
Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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