Mexican coffee helps dancer remember lost family
Cempasúchil, also known as the Mexican marigold, bloom from Vanessa Ramirez’s patio garden in Phoenix. Soon for Día de los Muertos she plans to put out photos of her grandparents, palo santo, a plate of pan de muerto and a clay pitcher of homemade café de olla, a Mexican spiced coffee.
She plans to light candles and burn copal, letting the woodsy scent of incense clear the air and guide her departed loved ones home.
Ramirez is the founder of Ballet Folklorico Quetzalli, a Mesa-based group that teaches and performs regional Mexican folk dances. Through dance, she’s learned and continues to learn more about the diverse culture and traditions of Mexico, including Día de los Muertos.
The holiday has become a way for her to cope with death in her family. Ramirez wishes she had understood what Día de los Muertos meant when she was a teenager and she experienced for the first time the death of someone close to her, her grandfather.
“Losing a loved one, it’s difficult. it’s sad, it’s painful,” Ramirez said. “And I didn’t ever understand that we, as part of our culture and who we are, that we celebrate their lives. That they continue to be with us.”
How she’s passing on
Dia de los Muertos traditions
Ramirez described confusing time.
At home she spoke Spanish, ate Mexican food and watched Mexican TV shows with her parents, who are immigrants from Sonora. But outside the house, her parents wanted her to speak English and assimilate at school. They told her she had to study hard so she could succeed the way she supposedly couldn’t in Mexico.
“I didn’t understand what was so bad about living in Mexico or being Mexican,” Ramirez said. “The few times we were there, I had a blast. But at school, I was the Mexican. I wasn’t a citizen of this country. I didn’t belong here.”
In Mexico, her cousins teased her by calling her a gringa. She felt “ni de aqui, ni de allá,” a phrase meaning “neither here, nor there” that’s often used to describe the bicultural experience of Mexican Americans.
Over the years, dance helped give her a sense of belonging and she wants to pass that sense onto her daughter and her “dance family.”
Some of her students feel intimidated or awkward because they don’t speak
her
youth
as
a
Spanish or have never been to Mexico, she said.
To help connect her students to Mexican culture, she gives homework assignments so they’re learning more than dance. For Día de los Muertos this year, she’s asking her students to prepare ofrendas in a shoebox to display at the studio, as well as cempasúchil out of tissue paper because marigolds symbolize remembrance, she said.
Last year she had her students make Catrina calaveras out of paper mache, as well as butterflies. This is the season when monarch butterflies migrate back to Mexico and they’re said to carry the souls of the deceased, she explained.
At home she typically makes a pot of café de olla with ground coffee, cinnamon, piloncillo and — an addition she picked up in Oaxaca — a bit of chocolate.
She started making café de olla every year after a trip with her daughter Giselle to Guadalajara, where they drank coffee from earthen clay mugs and felt an instant connection to home. Her abuelita Trini, who died eight years ago, used to make it in a turquoise-blue, tin coffee kettle on a wood-burning stove, so café de olla reminds Ramirez of her abuelita, she said.
“We enjoy the foods they used to eat, sing the songs they used to like to sing and do different things that still make you feel like they’re here with you,” Ramirez said. “It helps me get through my days.”
‘It’s a beautiful celebration’
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Ramirez remembered when she was high school how the death of her
grandfather devastated her for years. After he died she could still hear his voice and see visions of him every so often, she described.
She believes understanding the meaning behind Día de los Muertos would have helped her process her pain more easily.
“If I had that connection and understood what it’s about — it’s not just paint yourself and buy all the little things and woo hoo Hallmark, but how it helps people cope and grieve — it would have been a lot easier,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez said people typically bring to the ofrenda foods their deceased family members liked to eat. This year Ramirez said she’ll likely make mole with chicken, rice, beans and corn tortillas. Nana Chuy, her grandmother who died last year, loved tacos dorados, so
she might make those too, she said.
This year she’s setting the ofrenda up outside because her nana enjoyed flowers and the outdoors. Ramirez will serve café de olla from a clay pitcher painted with colorful flowers, a keepsake she brought from Mexico.
She and her daughter have celebrated the holiday for about the last 15 years now and Ramirez hopes Día de los Muertos can give Giselle a healthy way to deal with loss.
“It’s a coping mechanism, it’s a beautiful celebration,” Ramirez said. “It’s difficult and it’s painful, but we’re celebrating them, who they are in our life, who they were and the strength they brought to our families. We’re celebrating all the funny things they used to do. Keeping that alive is important.”