Raw States
Self Help Graphics Dia de los Muertos Procession & Celebration
Los Angeles, CA · Arts & Culture
- When
- October 31, 2026
- Where
- Mariachi Plaza to East LA Civic Center Park · Los Angeles · CA
- Cost
- Not confirmed
- Status
- Approximate: based on past editions, not announced yet
A procession from Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights to East LA Civic Center Park, with dancers, poets, and musicians leading the way, followed by an altar exhibition and celebration. Self Help Graphics has organized it since 1972, and arts historians credit the event with helping establish the modern Dia de los Muertos tradition in the United States. The 2025 edition was the 52nd annual.
The history within reach
A procession from Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights to East LA Civic Center Park, with dancers, poets, and musicians leading the way, followed by an altar exhibition and celebration.
A railroad hospital that declined with its neighbourhood and closed in 1991, then spent two decades as a horror film set before conversion to senior housing.
A free annual tribute to Santa Cecilia, patron saint of musicians, held at Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights since 1989.
John Landis directed the fourteen minute film that came out on 2 December 1983 and cost about half a million dollars, and the part everyone can still do from memory was shot here, in the roadway of Union Pacific Avenue just west of the Calzona Street corner.
A Japanese Buddhist summer festival at Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo, built around bon odori folk dancing, taiko drumming, and food booths in the temple parking lot.