Middlebury Celebrates Fifth Annual Día de Muertos With Campuswide Procession
Middlebury faculty and students came together on Sunday, November 1, to host the fifth annual Día de Muertos celebration on campus. The event featured a procession through campus with music and puppets, performances by theatre and dance groups, and a community ofrenda honoring the dead.
“Unlike Halloween, or unlike perhaps other traditions surrounding death that might be gloomy, Día De Muertos actually focuses on liveliness and on vibrancy,” said Olga Sanchez Saltviet, assistant professor of theatre. “There’s a lot of color, there’s music, there’s performance, there’s spoken word.”
Sanchez Saltviet teaches a course called Cultural Community Collaboration & Production where students study the holiday, lead workshops and activities for their peers, and assist her in producing the celebration.
“I think bringing the celebration to Middlebury is really important, especially for the Hispanic community, because this is a big thing in our culture,” said Brandy Lopez ’30, one of the students in the course. “It’s honestly just a nice way to honor the people who came before us.”
The evening began at the Anderson Freeman Center, where participants gathered before setting off on a procession around campus.
The group made its way to St. Mary’s Church, where local community members who had attended a Spanish-language Mass joined the procession. As Sanchez Saltviet explained, Día de Muertos is a syncretized holiday, bringing together different cultural and religious traditions. “You see elements that are indigenous and elements that are Catholic.”
The procession continued up the hill, crossing McCullough lawn on their way to Storrs Walk. Along the walkway leading to the Middlebury Chapel, several student organizations had constructed ofrendas, Spanish for “offerings.” The elaborate altars featured photographs and objects commemorating deceased loved ones.
The procession then moved to Gifford Amphitheatre, where Beyond The Page performed a bilingual rendition of the folktale La Llorona, or the weeping woman. After that, at Proctor Terrace, a group of students performed baile folklórico, a style of traditional Mexican folk dance. The performances concluded at the tennis courts, where students from Sanchez Saltviet’s course The Creative Process presented choreography in calavera outfits.
As the procession made its way to the Middlebury Chapel, the evening concluded with more songs and a ceremony honoring deceased loved ones. On their way out, people were invited to leave notes at a large community ofrenda.
“This is the time of year when the veil between the living and the dead is the thinnest,” said Sanchez Saltviet. “So it’s a good time to bring the spirits of the dead closer.”