It has been a traumatic time for our community. Amid Trump’s deployment of federal troops to the Bay Area, immigrant families across the region braced for the worst. Even after city leaders confirmed the operation was called off, our bodies still carry that anxiety as ICE continues to harass and detain our neighbors.
In moments like these, rituals of remembrance help us find grounding. Across cultures, people have always built altars to honor what matters most and to reconnect with the sacred.
For guidance, I spoke with Concepción “Concha” Saucedo Martínez, a Mexican Yaqui Chicana born and raised in California, and co-founder of Instituto Familiar de la Raza, an inspiring community mental health clinic where she has spent decades integrating traditional Indigenous healing with Western therapy. Concha will be sharing her writing about altars in an upcoming anthology on ancestral therapy practices.
Concha reminds us that intention is what matters most when making an altar. Whether you’re building one for the first time or tending to one passed down through generations, it’s the love, memory and gratitude that transform a few gathered objects into a sacred space of connection and healing.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Q: Do you remember when you first became interested in altars and how your experience with them developed?
My family always had a lot of altars for La Virgencita and different saints. I didn’t see them as something out of the ordinary. It was simply part of life.
It surprises me how altars have recently drawn so much interest. Many experience them as an expression of art, and that’s a good beginning. But altars are much more than that. They are our connection to the sublime, to something larger than ourselves.
Q: How would you describe or define an altar?
An altar is something one makes to honor what is above or within us: saints, ancestors, or sacred memories. It’s a way to manifest your love and the respect you hold for them.
Q: What about the fear-based messages people have absorbed — that altars go against religion or are dark?
Altars are an honoring of love and beauty. We are always making altars without recognizing we are. I know that some people fear that altars are tied to devil worship, but that’s not true. An altar is a place to put down your wishes or fears, to seek solace, or to express gratitude. Its meaning depends on the person’s intention.
Q: What are your thoughts about the prayers and intentions one should have before beginning an altar?
Before creating anything, there should be preparation and reflection. Ask yourself: Will this be helpful? What do I hope to accomplish?
Intention is one of the most important parts of the preparation. People often have altars without realizing it. When they have a picture of a parent or pet who has passed, with a candle or flower nearby. That is an altar, because it’s a place of honoring or remembering someone close to them.
It’s very simple, but people have made it complicated because of fear. When violence brought more deaths to our neighborhoods, people would place flowers at the site of death and care for that space in honor of the person who passed. That’s also an altar.We have an altar year-round in the lobby of Instituto Familiar de la Raza. It is always there to greet people in the waiting room. It’s something they can see and know they are secure and welcome. It is non-denominational, and people are invited to bring anything they’d like to add: a prayer, a flower. They can sit there and relax. It is our way of letting visitors and patients know they are safe when they see our altar.
