ALMAS hosts Día de Muertos celebration Sunday at the Naperville Riverwalk

Naperville’s Día de Muertos celebration returns for a fourth year Sunday, Nov. 1, to the downtown Naperville Riverwalk Grand Pavilion.

Hosted by the Alliance of Latinos Motivating Action in the Suburbs (ALMAS), “Día de Muertos: Celebrating Community and Life” is a free event from 1-6 p.m. that’s expected to attract about 3,000 visitors.

Día de los Muertos is widely celebrated Nov. 1 and 2 in Mexico and Latin America. It honors loved ones who have died with food, music, community gatherings and homemade altars called ofrendas.

ALMAS founder/President Lili Burciaga said that when the Naperville event debuted, there weren’t many Día de Muertos celebrations in the area. Often she and her family would have to drive to Chicago to observe the holiday, which is why the nonprofit decided to launch a more local gathering for the Naperville area.

“We wanted to make sure that our community members feel that they belong and that they have somewhere to celebrate, and it’s exciting to see that since in the last four years, it’s growing in popularity,” Burciaga said. “We’re seeing many other local cities or municipalities host their own events as well.”

This year’s event will include many of the traditions that ALMAS’ Día de Muertos celebration has featured in the past, including a seven-level community altar where people can add photos and mementos for loved ones who have died.

The Community Panteón, or cemetery, will also make a comeback. ALMAS provides a four-by-four space and mock tombs for people to personalize.

“We set these up on mock grave sites where we kind of pay homage to the practices that we see happening throughout Latin America, where families go to their loved one’s grave site and they clean the grave area and decorate it with marigolds and other food offerings,” Burciaga said.

Beyond the tombs and altar, ALMAS will hold its Reflections of Life memorial and Monarch Tribute.

The former is a slideshow with pictures submitted by community members of loved ones who have passed away. The latter features monarch butterfly art made by Chicago-area youth, including students in schools in Naperville, Plainfield and Chicago and even from a juvenile detention center in Cook County.

Every fall, millions of monarch butterflies travel from the United States and Canada to the mountains of Michoacán, Mexico, typically arriving as families begin to honor their loved ones for Día de Muertos. Because their travel coincides with the holiday, it is believed the butterflies hold the souls of the deceased returning home.

The monarch art will be displayed around a tree, symbolizing their migratory journey. While the students have dedicated some of the monarchs to deceased loved ones, some have been left blank for community members to dedicate at the event.

Outside of the remembrance ceremonies, vendors will be selling food, including Mexican fare like tacos, gorditas and pan de muerto. Artisanal vendors will sell marigolds, personalized candles and personalized stuffed animals.

Performances this year will feature folklorico dancers and mariachi music. The event will open with a traditional Toltec-Chichimecca dance performance by Danzantes Unidos Mitotiliztli.

There will also be plenty of “Catrinas” — skeleton-faced female figures — at the celebration, including a live Catrina painting by Jose Art followed by a Catrina and Catrin catwalk and contest.

Sculptures of Catrinas and alebrijes — brightly colored Mexican folk art typically depicting mythical creatures — alsowill fill the event grounds. Artist Emanuel Zárate Ortiz is inviting attendees to help him paint one of his monumental Catrina sculptures.

It is a celebration at which Burciaga hopes everyone feels welcome.

“It’s important that everyone in our community, not only Latinos, feel welcome,” she said. “We open our celebration to anybody that wants to participate, whether it’s something that you do every year or whether it’s something you’ve never done before. We welcome everyone to come and just celebrate and be part of it, and also learn.”

cstein@chicagotribune.com