{"id":61577,"date":"2018-11-02T10:58:24","date_gmt":"2018-11-02T16:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/big-picture-high-students-celebrate-dia-de-los-muertos\/"},"modified":"2018-11-02T16:58:24","modified_gmt":"2018-11-02T16:58:24","slug":"big-picture-high-students-celebrate-dia-de-los-muertos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/big-picture-high-students-celebrate-dia-de-los-muertos\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Picture High students celebrate Dia de los Muertos"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Shannon
Shannon Cruise, left, a teacher at Big Picture High, said she wanted to present the traditions and celebration of Dia de los Muertos in an authentic way, and having her student, Paola Lerma, right, whose family comes from Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, share her family\u2019s traditions was ideal.<\/span>Patrick Armijo\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Paola Lerma took her fellow Big Picture High School students on a journey of cultural discovery during a four-week session examining grief, remembrance and the Mexican celebration of Dia de los Muertos.<\/p>\n

Lerma, 17, a senior, helped her teacher, Shannon Cruise, lead the four-week session \u2013 discussing her family\u2019s Dia de los Muertos traditions from their ancestral home in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez.<\/p>\n

\u201cDia de los Muertos isn\u2019t a celebration of death. It\u2019s a celebration of life,\u201d Lerma said. \u201cYou talk about what a loved one liked to do, their habits, their favorite movies, their favorite foods. It\u2019s a day when we welcome those who have died back into our lives for a day and have them spend the day with us.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the day\u2019s traditions is to create altars to loved ones who have died. The Big Picture students created a class altar for display as part of the Durango Arts Center\u2019s Festival de los Muertos<\/a>, which will be on display through Nov. 9.<\/p>\n

The altar often includes photographs that a departed family member loved, the person\u2019s favorite flowers, and food and water for the long journey the spirit of the departed has made to the family home.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Big Picture High class on grief, remembrance and Dia de los Muertos created a class altar for display at the Festival de los Muertos at the Durango Arts Center.<\/span>Patrick Armijo\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Big Picture High class\u2019 altar contained an infantry helmet for a student\u2019s grandfather who served in Korea and Vietnam, and a banana for a student\u2019s grandmother who liked to be called \u201cnana banana.\u201d<\/p>\n

It also contained a drawing of Lerma\u2019s grandmother who was noted for her protection and nurturing of a peach tree and her love for coffee. In the left pupil of Lerma\u2019s grandmother\u2019s eye was a reflection of her peach tree and in the right pupil a reflection of a cup of coffee.<\/p>\n

The class altar also included Pan de Muerto, bread of the dead, baked using the Lermas\u2019 family recipe. Lerma, who is the daughter of Laura and Benito Lerma, told classmates they should remember the person whose life they are celebrating as they knead the dough.<\/p>\n

Cruise said the class was a great experience for students to see a different cultural perspective on grieving and death.<\/p>\n

\u201cOften, we don\u2019t talk a lot about people who have passed. We put them away in a box, and don\u2019t talk about them. This is an opportunity to open the box,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most touching item on the Big Picture altar was a letter to Cruise, who came to Big Picture High after teaching at Aztec High School. The letter was from Casey Marquez, an art student of Cruise\u2019s who was killed in the Aztec High School shooting Dec. 7, 2017.<\/p>\n

The letter was one of thanks to Cruise for what Marquez had learned.<\/p>\n

\u201cArt is what\u2019s inside, your emotions, your feelings, your thoughts,\u201d Marquez wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s part of you. You can change the world with your (art) piece or you can send a message using your art.\u201d<\/p>\n

parmijo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

creates remembrance altar for Durango Arts Center display<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[4539,2007,29,2678],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-61577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-big-picture-high-school","tag-culture-general","tag-newsletter","tag-religious-festival-or-holiday"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61577"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=61577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}