On Oct. 30, La Casa Latina hosted a Día de los Muertos event for local high school students to celebrate the holiday and be introduced to college readiness resources.
Held at the ARCH, the event was attended by around 60 high school students from George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science and Howard Furness High School, as well as around 50 Penn community members. The event featured cultural celebrations as well as college insights from current Penn students and Emmanuel Martinez, the associate director of Scholarly & Professional Development at Penn First Plus.
Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a tradition celebrated in many Latin American cultures to “commemorate the lives of the dearly departed and to welcome the return of their spirits,” according to an article by the National Museum of the American Latino.
The Penn event, titled “Remembering Our Past, Building Our Futures,” began with an introductory presentation by Krista Cortes, the director of La Casa Latina. El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, a Mexican American-focused student organization, and Istmo y Vos, a Central American-focused student organization, sent volunteers to the event to talk with high school students.
Cortes described to The Daily Pennsylvanian the importance of La Casa Latina in connecting with high school students in Philadelphia.
According to Cortes, La Casa Latina has welcomed Philadelphia high schools to the event for the past three years. She described the connection as “a really beautiful marriage” of the ideas of “honoring our past and thinking about our ancestors [and] the sacrifices that they’ve made in their lives so that we could be here.”
She elaborated further on the importance of connecting Latino high school students in Philadelphia to Penn, adding that doing so lies within La Casa Latina’s broader mission of advocacy.
The event included a brief discussion of high school programs offered by Penn with representatives from Penn Arts and Sciences High School Programs. Students engaged in a writing activity, dedicating letters to their departed loved ones and adding them to the community ofrenda — an altar used to celebrate Día de Los Muertos — if they so chose.
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Gabriela Tufiño, a 12th-grade student at Furness, said that this was her favorite activity.
“It was a really great experience to learn about Penn and learn about different experiences of students being first generation,” she added of the event.
The event then transitioned into a student panel and presentation by Martinez titled “First-Gen Pathways to Higher Education.”
The panel highlighted first-generation student experiences at college, centering around a theme of “education as legacy.” Students on the panel discussed how they stayed connected to their roots at Penn as well, elaborating on how they carried their families and communities with them into college. Martinez also offered information about the college admissions process.
Jennifer Ramos, a 12th-grade student at Furness, said that the panel helped her learn the distinction between colleges and universities.
“I thought colleges and universities were the same thing, but now I know that university is way bigger than college,” Ramos said.
The event concluded with a campus tour.
