3 Dia de los Muertos Events in Ventura Area

Dia de los Muertos will be celebrated Wednesday, October 28th 2015  in Ventura College’s Guthrie Hall from 6-9 pm. 

M.E.Ch.A welcomes everyone to join this free event which offers many hands on activities and historical content of this Native/Mexican tradition plus free food, live music, and guest speakers. All are invited to come and honor the lives of those who have passed.

This year a special altar will be created for recently deceased Chicano Studies Professor Mayo de la Rocha as well as Ben Saiz. As MEChA advisor, Mayo was instrumental in bringing people like Dolores Huerta in 2014 and Luis Rodriguez in 2015 to Ventura College. Luis Rodrigues is the poet Laureate of Los Angeles and is author of the memoir Always Running. (Read more about his visit and view a trailer that my students produced here.)

Ventura College is located at 4667 Telegraph Road, Ventura, CA. Parking on-campus is $2.

The Ventura Museum of Art will holds its 15th Annual Day of the Dead Celebration Sunday, November 1
from 11 am – 3 pm. The free event includes Arts and Crafts for kids, Special decorated altars throughout the galleries, Face painting for a nominal fee, Food Trucks providing food for sale plus presentations by:
• Ballet Folklorico de Bell Arts
• DATA Mariachi
• Ballet Flolkorico Mestizo of Oxnard College
• Danza Azteca Tonantzin

Museum of Ventura County
100 E. Main St. • Ventura • 805.653.0323
www.venturamuseum.org

Santa Paula’s  AG Museum , the Santa Paula Museum of Art and the  Santa Paula Cemetery
will also celebrate Dia de los Muertos on November 1 • 1 – 3 pm. Ag Museum will celebrate the fall return of the Monarch butterfly, a symbol of the returning spirits with Butterfly crafts and Live demonstrations.

Agriculture Museum
926 Railroad Ave. • Santa Paula • 805.525.3100
www.venturamuseum.org

Last year’s Book of Life told a story about this traditional Native/Mexican event that occurs every year in early November. It includes beautiful moments like this one which fits into a theme I am working on about empathy. (Read yesterday’s blog post “On Opening Your Heart and Mind” here; more to come).

For extra credit or to make up an absence, my students can attend any of these events and write about it to turn in or on their blogs (please comment and link here so we can read them!). They can also create their own altars, document them, and write about it (again, please post on your blog and link below!)