Jennifer Suan
Handmade Día de Muertos sculptures at Mano a Mano: Mexican Culture Without Borders' office on September 2025.
Though she was raised in Mexico, experimental folk musician Marilyn Castillo rarely celebrated the Day of the Dead growing up. Day of the Dead, or Día de Muertos is a Mexican holiday during which families honor the lives of their deceased loved ones through elaborate, colorful altars, or ofrendas, which spiritually welcome the departed. For Castillo, who now lives in New York City, Day of the Dead was a mere “a civic activity” growing up, showcased in churches and town halls in her childhood town Ciudad Juárez, a Mexican border city on the Rio Grande.
After moving to New York in 2014 to pursue musical studies, Castillo developed a newfound cultural connection through performing in Day of the Dead events at bars and local live music venues. In 2018, Castillo became the female lead singer for the Calpulli Mexican Dance Company; now, she performs music with the company every year on Day of the Dead in theaters across the tristate area. “I like that people from other cultures here find it consoling as well,” Castillo tells The Progressive. “Even though they were not born with this tradition, as I was not, it is something that you can adopt because it’s so beautiful.”
Jonathan Morelos
Musician Marilyn Castillo at a Harlem Día de Muertos celebration and performance, November 2024.
Each year, Mexican American artists like Castillo in New York City—and across the United States—celebrate Day of the Dead with musical performances, dance numbers, art installations, and other activities. This year, however, their work offers the New York Mexican community an urgent sense of solidarity, hope, and resistance amid federal immigration raids. In celebrating this centuries-old holiday, Mexican Americans are asserting their right to exist and publicly express their cultural heritage.
As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents continue to violently detain people, attendees must take safety protocols at these festivities into serious consideration, says Mexican American anthropologist Christina Patten. Still, she says, there is power in continuing to celebrate a Mexican tradition in defiance of the Trump Administration's attacks on immigrant communities.
“Resistance is even just the act of doing something that is culturally Mexican and Mexican American in general,” Patten says. Unabated Día de Muertos celebrations, she says, can be “a way for people to connect and show community and allyship to people who are impacted by ICE raids.” For her part, Castillo says she uses her music to communicate “a message to the audience of fraternity, unity, and hope.”
Día de Muertos art and political activism centered on resisting alienation and systemic violence have long been central to the identity of Chicanos, an identity of which formed to emphasize Mexican culture in the face of assimilation. In the 1960s and 1970s, Chicano art-activists transformed the way Día de Muertos is celebrated in the United States, incorporating cultural and artistic elements from Indigenous communities in Mexico and using the holiday to uplift the Chicano identity. Their use of Día de Muertos prints with cavalera, or skull imagery, in particular, laid the groundwork for artists working at the intersection of cultural exchange and social justice.
Chicano artists in New York City are now building on that legacy, working to rebuild a sense of community in the wake of increasing attacks on the Latino community. Andrea Arroyo, a self-identified “artivist” who fuses folk and contemporary art, says that while growing up in a family of non-Catholic creatives in the predominantly Catholic Mexico City, Mexico, her family culturally celebrated the holiday, rather than celebrating it in a traditional religious way. Arroyo was first commissioned ten years ago to create traditional Día de Muertos ofrenda installations for various art institutions. Traditionally, ofrendas are tiered altars showcasing photos of deceased loved ones. Adornments to the altar typically include food, marigold flowers, and candles along with religious symbols such as crosses.
“It became important to me to make them my own, so rather than just having a traditional altar, I incorporated contemporary elements,” Arroyo says. Incorporating contemporary 2D illustrations with folk traditions like papel picados, floral textile motifs, and calaveras, she says, brought her “closer to the artisans that make the traditional things” while making art that is “universal” to culturally diverse audiences. As an artist, Arroyo strives to make art participatory and driven by social action by touching upon political themes in her work: “I use art as a tool for change. I do believe that art can change the world.”
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Michael Palma
"Viva la Vida" by Andrea Arroyo at the Sugar Hill Museum, October 2025.
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Mariana Otálora
"Life is a Dream" by Andrea Arroyo at Flatiron District, October 2024.
On October 25, Arroyo opened her newest ofrenda installation, titled “Viva La Vida,” for the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling in Manhattan. By collaborating with museums across the city with installations that celebrate her culture, she says, Mexican artists can break barriers in art scenes where they have been historically underrepresented. “I really want our communities to go into these places, to be part of these places, and to understand that all of those places are all of ours. And the opposite as well—people who come to see the traditional museum encounter something non-traditional, contemporary, made by a brown woman from Mexico.”
For Bronx-based contemporary and folk dancer Argelia Arreola, cultural artistic fusion—the practice of combining different cultural elements and styles into art—is a way to meld creative expression and social justice. Also born and raised in Mexico City, Arreola discovered a passion for West African dance after moving to Veracruz, Mexico, for university after taking classes taught by Estela Lucio. Her desire to learn more about cross-cultural artistic exchange didn’t stop after her schooling. Upon moving to New York City in 2013, Arreola discovered a community of people who listen to son Jarocho, or “Veracruz sound,” a regional music genre that blends Indigenous, Spanish, and West African sounds. “The son Jarocho helped me a lot to find community,” Arreola says. “I really find it in the fandangos, during the parties, playing jarana [Mexican string instrument], and singing in the celebrations like Día de Muertos.”
Gabriel Elizondo
"Diablos" choreographed by Argelia Arreola for Ballet Nepantla's Mística, 2022.
Arreola is usually performing dances on tour across the United States and Mexico during Día de Muertos, but that doesn’t stop her from celebrating the holiday through her performances. During the rest of the year, she choreographs dances for Mística, a Día de Muertos show exploring the afterlife, put on by New York City-based dance company Ballet Nepantla. In one piece, which Arreola describes as an homage to her parents, she combines Mexican folk dance with Afro-influence. Following each performance, attendees are welcome to speak with the dancers and choreographers. “They feel identified with us,” she says. “It’s very fulfilling.”
In February, the Bronx Council of the Arts granted Arreola funds to create a dance production dedicated to Las Patronas, a group of women from Veracruz who provide food for migrants riding on La Bestia, the infamous freight train on which many migrants ride to reach the U.S.-Mexico border. The purpose of this dance, which Arreola plans to perform on December 17, is to create community “like Las Patronas are doing—to help others. We are humans, we are living in the same world, so let’s try to make community.”
In the face of danger and uncertainty, art remains especially integral in reinforcing the Mexican American community’s endurance. Arroyo says, “Music, dance, art in general is one of the best ways to bring people together.”