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Day of the Dead and Occupy L.A.

Los Angeles seems to have a talent for the carnivalesque.  What I mean is a scene where people are packed together in a dense, noisy stream, flowing through streets lined with bright, colorful sights and music.  The L.A. Art Walk is like that, at least in mid-summer.  The Día de los Muertos celebration in Hollywood Forever Cemetery is also an explosion of crowd feeling and popular creativity.  People flow through the cemetery along paths lined with ofrendas, the traditional free-form altars built on this holiday to honor and recall the dead.  At Hollywood Forever, the inventiveness is amazing: lights, candles, video, illuminated balloons, photographs, paintings and other art, live music and live (dead) dancers.  These are not ofrendas like your abuelita used to make.  Near the entrance is a display of Aztec drumming and dancing.  Costumed dead roam the paths; many  visitors are also in costume and makeup to fit the occasion.  And of course there are food trucks, souvenir booths, films projected on the large walls, and performances on the main stage (roughly where they show movies on other weekends).  We caught the following before one act: “…recordamos nuestros muertitos, se nos imaginamos cuando eran jóvenes y gozaban de la vida, del sexo, del amor, de la comida…” (we remember our dead darlings, we imagine them when they were young and full of the joy of life, sex, love, food).  It is the pure spirit of carnival.

Occupy L.A. is not far removed from this.  People swarm over it with the most varied agendas: end the Fed (Ron Paul’s minions were much in evidence that day), legalize marijuana, go vegan, PETA, peace (of course), neo-Zapatista, go green, 9/11 conspiracy, anti-9/11-conspiracy.  Raps and speeches from the podium are non-stop.  The grounds are covered with camping tents; it is dirty, scruffy, fascinating.

I don’t know if other cities are like this (I assume the “Occupy” areas are somewhat similar).  I don’t know if L.A. has always been like this.  Is it a special time in the city’s history?  Will we look back with nostalgia on the Decade of Dudamel?