MINNEAPOLIS — Mercado Central is located in the heart of south Minneapolis' Lake Street corridor, and employees say the busy marketplace gets even busier on Día De Los Muertos: Day of the Dead.
Jessica Sanchez works in floral shop Del Sol Floreria, and she came to work Wednesday wearing elegant makeup resembling La Calavera Catrina, a tall female skeleton that has become a widely recognized symbol of the Mexican holiday.
"It's basically a few days celebration where we make an ofrenda, it's called, so like a mini altar, depending on how big you want to make it, and you put food, you put bread, you put liquor, you put juice, water, anything to welcome past relatives or friends - loved ones - that passed away," Sanchez said.
The bakery, Panderia el Mexicano, is selling a lot of pan de muerto, sweet bread with bone-shaped strips on top, and rolls shaped like babies.
Employees say this is the last day people are shopping for items to customize their ofrendas. Thursday, items are removed and brought to the cemetery, where their loved ones are laid to rest. Many families spend the day gathering there.
Mercado Central's project manager says one of the vendors makes ofrendas for the building each year. This year, one of them honors the lives of four people who previously worked in the building: a man who sold accessories at Ocatimes Relojeria, a woman who owned juice bar La Reyna de los Jugos, another woman who was building secretary and a third woman who worked for a nonprofit but frequently met with community in the marketplace.
"You bring their pictures in memory of them and you also bring flowers and the specific flowers that we use in this flower shop is called cempasúchil," said Sanchez, who also works as a social worker off site.
The entire place is filled with authentic traditions, but these days even big box stores sell Día De Los Muertos merchandise. Sanchez says although Día De Los Muertos is a Mexican holiday, other Latinx cultures are generally welcome to observe it.
"It's cool that other people from other cultures can celebrate it and even just asking questions about it, but it's mostly only in the Mexican culture," she said. "In Mexico, they close the streets, they do big skeletons, it's like a whole parade for days and in here you don't see that, right? But it is interesting to see that other stores like Target are selling stuff about it, which is cool but it's also like they're profiting off our culture so that's where it's also a gray area for me."
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