In Reginaldo Salcedo’s hometown of San Juan del Cesar, La Guajira, Colombia, he didn’t honor his dead ancestors by donning calavera face paint or placing pan de muerto at the base of an ofrenda, or altar, like Mexicans do on Día de los Muertos. On November 2 in Colombia, his family celebrated the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (a k a All Souls’ Day), a religious holiday he describes as “the union” of indigenous and Catholic traditions.
In Colombia, his family cleaned the tombs of their beloved deceased, adorning their graves with flowers and candles to represent the resurrection of Christ. They prepared food and drink — sometimes alcoholic, Salcedo said — to quench the dead relatives’ thirst and hunger as they travel through purgatory. They celebrated mass in the cemetery, listing the names of their loved ones on paper for the priest to bless. In place of an altar, Colombians create a mosaic of photos, which families pray for and bless together. Despite the regional differences between ancestor-worship events in Latin America, Salcedo said they are all connected. “In reality, they’re the same celebration,” he said. They are about people “saying we love you and we never forget you.”
Salcedo’s own mother died when he was 12. “When she died, I wasn’t crying, but I went to my room and felt the necessity to write something,” Salcedo said. He can’t remember what he wrote down, but only that it was the beginning of his journey to becoming a Catholic priest. After attending seminary in Colombia and university in Argentina, and becoming an ordained minister in Ecuador, he joined colleagues in Saginaw, Michigan, in 2001, where he worked as a pastor for many years before moving to Carpinteria.