Every year on Nov. 1, the streets of Mexico fill up with a unique cultural blend of color, laughter and mourning.

It’s Dia de Los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, an annual remembrance of those who have passed and a celebration of life.

Bearing a macabre resemblance to Mardi Gras, the old Aztec ritual is filled with color, costumes and cultural appeal. The celebrators wear wooden skull masks called calacas, symbolic of their dead family members.

Participants also make pilgrimages to cemeteries, where they line tombstones with candles and marigolds.

Hector Avalos, associate professor of religious studies and director of the U.S. Latino/a Studies Program, says Day of the Dead is comparable to Halloween.

“It is like the American tradition of Halloween, only with a different cultural background,” Avalos says.

“It’s a celebration to make fun of death while still being solemn.”

At the Memorial Union on Friday, students paid their own tribute to the dead by displaying altars outside the Great Hall.

The most noticeable altar of all was one that remembered Edgar del Pilar, a junior who died last March in an apartment fire.

Lining his altar were artifacts of his life, including a bowling pin and his shoes, placed among numerous pictures of del Pilar with his friends.

One of the people alongside del Pilar in some of the pictures is Alicia Iniguez, a friend who helped build the altar.

Iniguez, an undeclared graduate student, says the process of building the altar — although very emotional — helped her with the loss.

“Bringing his things out was really hard, but it can be very therapeutic,” Iniguez says. “It made me want to be stronger.”

Another evident element on the altar was unique cultural foods, like Pan de Muertos or bread of the dead, some of which is hard to come by in Iowa.

“We had to bring some things in from Texas,” Iniguez says. “We had to go to Mexican stores in Des Moines to find some things. We made do with what we could find in Iowa.”

Another friend of del Pilar’s, Carmen Sanchez, was also active in the building process.

“It was very difficult last semester,” says Sanchez, graduate student in interdisciplinary graduate studies. “It gave me the opportunity to see he lived life fully, even though his stay here was a short one.”

The building process of the altars is surprisingly simple, she says.

“The process itself is not long because there are staple elements that need to be included,” she says.

“The most important elements are personal items that were meaningful to the person.”

Among the other altars in the display was a tribute to women with breast cancer, sponsored by the central Iowa chapter of Sigma Lambda Gamma National Sorority.

“It is a tribute to women who have died of breast cancer,” says Sanchez, a member of the sorority.

“But it is also to help increase awareness in women.”

Sanchez says the altar displays were the final point of this year’s Latino Heritage Month and wished more people would have appreciated the displays or made one of their own.

“We put in a lot of hard work,” she says.

“I wish others could’ve seen what Latino countries have to offer, especially with the large Latino population on campus.”