Day of the Dead walk in Tucson
A skull-faced crowd marches to remember.
It wasn’t your typical 4th Avenue party. As Tucson’s All Souls Procession lurched and drummed past the bars and clubs, the verve was there but the black-out drunks were missing. This was reason for pause.
No drunks?
In the short time I’ve been in town, the 4th Avenue strip has become my go-to for a good time. Seeing it so packed but so sober — so well-behaved — was weirder than the Victorian get-ups in the crowd and all the painted-on skulls. To joining-in was joining a solemn hive of disguised men, women and ghoulish toddlers communing with death.
They wheeled coffins and altars with open urns glued-on, burping ash at the bumps in the road. They carried portraits of lost loved-ones, lockets, and locks of hair to honor memories. The clunky feet of the living trailed the dead. It wasn’t a parade. It was a procession, a ritual.
“I came to remember my father and my brother,” said Alicia Armijo, 34, who helped friends push a wooden float with pinned on family photos down the two-mile course.
The ritual spurred a low chant that passed through the crowd in waves, something like the “Ah-ai” in the chorus of “The Macarena,” only deeper. It also spurred reflection. How are they doing wherever they are? How am I doing on earth?
“I want my daughter to know I love her, that every day I try to fight for someone who needs help just like she did. I learned that from her,” said Joy Willets, 46, of her activist daughter Catherine who died of cancer.
Defiance was a part of the procession too — my favorite part. There was Joseph Kittinger and his gang screaming, “Fuck the reaper! Come get me motherfucker!”
And the kids, being themselves, cracked their make-up smiling and fought over candy on the sidewalk. One smacked the ice cream off another’s cone: crazy people, lunatics full of life. 
All photos by Daniel C. Britt.
Intermission
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