As thousands of flight disruptions on Monday due to severe storms spanned across the East Coast, U.S. airlines have called on the the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to extend a waiver that allowed them to cut back on service.
21.07.2023 - 08:11 / roughguides.com / Frida Kahlo / Vincent Van-Gogh
America may still be off-limits for international travellers, but as Halloween approaches, Siobhan Warwicker recalls her experience of exuberant Mexican festivities in San Diego last year.
In the midday San Diego sun, down a Victorian brick row of the Gaslamp Quarter, the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo has not just returned from her grave, but multiplied. Unmistakable monobrows are set beneath profusions of flowers crowning braided hair, boots clacking and skirts rustling as they walk. Behind me, one Frida is deep in conversation with a Vincent van Gogh, complete with bloody bandage covering one ear.
Aside from the obvious appeal of dressing up as one of history’s most flamboyant painters, this cross-cultural meeting is also a very San Diego Halloween. While California’s heritage traces back to European settlers, the Golden State, of which San Diego is the southernmost city, was once part of Mexico. A treaty following the mid-1840s Mexican-American War forced Mexico to give up its northern territories, then even more land was bought in 1854.
Commuters and day-trippers stream back and forth across the border. Hispanic culture is alive in America’s south and Americanisms trickling into Mexico’s border towns, the two intertwined like Kahlo’s floral-adorned braids.
Mexican calavera in San Diego old town © Alexandre Mottet/Shutterstock
So, while body-sculpted Californians wearing lingerie queue for a Halloween party at the huge ballroom of my downtown hotel, The Guild, close by others prepare for a very different experience: Dia de los Muertos – the Day of the Dead.
In the days leading up to November 2nd, a blanket of orange marigold flowerheads sweeps through the Mexican communities of San Diego in shrines to the dead. It’s more than an act of remembrance: for Mexicans, this guides the spirits of loved ones back to the land of the living for this annual celebration.
The best place to see these displays is the Barrio Logan district’s Chicano Park, which turned fifty this year. Framed photographs of the deceased smile at each other in their frozen poses, presiding over their mini empires of candles and incense among the sea of flowers. To further tempt the spirits are a few of their favourite things: cans of Red Stripe lager for one, bunches of bananas for another.
It’s so vibrant and moving, you almost forget about the noisy flyover above your head. The construction of this brutal freeway right over the community in 1969, razing homes and plunging it into the shadows, symbolizes oppression of the immigrant community. This was a population who felt neither welcome here nor in Mexico, so, they began to protest with art. Today, murals cover every slab of concrete in the eight-acre space, the largest concentration of
As thousands of flight disruptions on Monday due to severe storms spanned across the East Coast, U.S. airlines have called on the the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to extend a waiver that allowed them to cut back on service.
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