Clark County marked Día de los Muertos this weekend with its Life in Death: Day of the Dead Festival, a free two-day gathering at Winchester Dondero Cultural Center and Park in Las Vegas featuring community altars, Mexican dance and music, and vendors selling food and handcrafted goods. The festival ran Sunday and Monday, Nov. 1 and 2, from 4 to 9 p.m. each day at 3130 S. McLeod Drive.
The festival was presented by Clark County Parks and Recreation and listed as free to attend, according to vegas4locals.com. The event listing also noted that food and handcrafted merchandise would be available for purchase from participating vendors, and that additional festival parking and shuttle service were planned at Valley High School and K.O. Knudson Academy of the Arts.
Altars and Performances Fill Winchester Park
Outdoor ofrendas — altars made in memory of deceased relatives and other loved ones — were set to be displayed in Winchester Park, per a listing from knpr.org. The same listing described programming that included Mexican dance and music, readings of calaveras, or skulls, along with an art exhibit and craft sales. KLAS 8 News Now reported that the festival's offerings also included face painting and hands-on art activities, and that visitors could take part in an interactive installation by uploading photos of loved ones to be projected onto a heart sculpture as a tribute, according to KLAS 8 News Now.
A Second Celebration Drew Crowds Downtown
While the county's festival unfolded at Winchester Park, a separate Día de los Muertos celebration at Civic Center Plaza outside Las Vegas City Hall drew hundreds of people on Sunday, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. That downtown event featured a middle school mariachi band and dancers in dresses adorned with vibrant flowers, the newspaper reported. Food trucks there sold tacos, churros, aguas frescas and New Mexican cuisine alongside colorful ofrendas and small businesses, and one altar was dedicated to pets that had died that year.
Día de los Muertos is traditionally celebrated on Nov. 1 and 2 to honor lost loved ones and offer a celebration of their memory, the Review-Journal noted. Clark County's festival and the downtown Civic Center gathering gave Las Vegas residents two distinct ways to mark the holiday this year, each built around the same themes of remembrance, music and community altars.
