This year’s Dia De Los Muertos Santa Rosa will have an intensified aura of celebration, as it marks its 25th year on Old Courthouse Square.
With solemn feeling, I remark that at the time of its establishment, it was uncommon to stage large-scale Mexican heritage events, and its placement on the square (aligned with Mendocino and Santa Rosa Avenue, City Hall and holy Mount Taylor, in the heart of Sonoma County) met with resistance.
Since Dia De Los Muertos Santa Rosa’s establishment, many other town celebrations followed in its wake. But the Santa Rosa tradition remains, perhaps, the most spiritual, largely due to its founder and moving spirit, Luz Navarrette (formerly of the Santa Rosa Junior College). From its 25 years, powerful stories of tears, catharsis and supernatural wonder are now endless.
CH: Luz, although this is a celebration of Mexican culture, you have welcomed all the region’s communities?
LN: Yes, it is becoming an inclusive multicultural celebration of loved ones that have crossed over.
CH: We are united in the common experience of death. Luz, I understand you are assisted in your work by loved ones who have crossed over. How do you stay open and receptive to signs and communications from the other side?
LN: When I wake up in the morning, I say hello to everyone on the other side—by name. First, I connect with God, and do a blessing—of everything. I start up there, then I come down from the sun and the moon and the stars, into the atmospheric energy of the Earth, and the clouds and the rain, and come down with the rain to the birds in the sky—I connect with everything until I connect with the core of the Earth, which connects with the core of my being.
I do all of this in a ritual that connects me to everything. And then I begin to connect with all of the people on my altar—all the people that have crossed over generations back. The ancestors. I ask them that if they have any desire to communicate with me or guide me; I welcome that. If they’re not busy, perhaps they can come and help me. I burn my incense, then I go about my day.
Learn more Follow the below link or the paths of marigold petals to Old Courthouse Square, Fourth Street and Santa Rosa Avenue, Santa Rosa, Nov. 1 and 2. Bring photos of your dead as well as the lightness of reminiscences and the weight of your grief. bit.ly/3UwFQjo
