Photos show enduring legacy of Mission’s Día de los Muertos procession

Community has a way of coming together. Dressed as catrinas, dozens of women in skull makeup and flower crowns walked alongside hundreds of others through San Francisco’s Mission District on Sunday for the neighborhood’s 44th annual Día de los Muertos procession. Aztec dancers led the way, their rattles keeping rhythm for families carrying marigolds, candles and portraits of loved ones.

Since the late 1970s, when the Mission’s first Día de los Muertos procesión took shape, Galería de la Raza and El Comité de Rescate Cultural have safeguarded its tradition and upheld the grassroots ethos of El Comité’s founder, Juan Pablo Gutiérrez Sánchez: “Nuestros muertos no se venden.” That principle has kept the event in the hands of community artists and neighborhood residents ever since.

For many, the Mission’s Día de los Muertos is a day of joy as much as remembrance, and in that joy, a form of defiance. “It’s always been organic,” said Louie Gutiérrez, owner of La Reyna Panadería. “That’s what makes it tick — that, with or without anything, the people are going to congregate at 22nd and Bryant at 7 p.m. on November 2.”

In an effort to fundraise for this year’s 44th event, Gutiérrez gathered cultural workers the night of October 8th at Medicine for Nightmares for Catrina Poesía y Pachanga in an evening of words, music and art that brought together poets from multiple generations and backgrounds: Josiah Luis Aldrete, Lidia Yanira, Kevin Madrigal Galindo (Chef Papi Chulo), and neighborhood legends Luis de la Garza and Huracán Gómez, who shared verses of nostalgia and revolution from the Mission and El Salvador.

Día de los Muertos has always been DIY. “It’s ours,” said Louie. “I think it’s come to be that way because of the loss of community through gentrification and COVID.”Despite the fear and uncertainty, Sunday’s procession was packed with Latino families and their children, first at Potrero del Sol Park for the Festival of Altars, then around Bryant and 24th streets. The aromas of burning sage and bacon-wrapped hot dogs filled the chilly air as Selena blared from a lowrider. Surrounding them, people danced in celebration, for both the living and the dead.