On October 31, families in San Jose will gather at the Mexican Heritage Plaza for Avenida de Altares, the annual Día de los Muertos celebration. In the weeks leading up to this event, artists will transform the plaza with altares, deeply personal works honoring loved ones who have passed, filled with photographs, marigolds, candles, and objects that hold memory.
Jessica Paz-Cedillos, chief executive officer at the Mexican Heritage Plaza, emphasizes that remembering is an act of love, but also prompts a broader question about what else remembrance asks of the community. She notes that names carry memory, recounting the reclaiming of the Mexican Heritage Plaza’s original name as an example of how names tell us who was here and what communities choose to carry forward.
However, Paz-Cedillos states that it is not enough to remember what previous generations built. The current generation also has a responsibility to ensure there is something left for the next generation to inherit. For her, this means rethinking preservation in East San Jose, viewing it not as an effort to freeze a neighborhood in time, but as creating conditions for the people who gave a place its identity to shape its future.
For generations, Latino families and other immigrant communities have established lives along Alum Rock Avenue. They opened businesses, created organizations, raised families, made art, and developed traditions that have become integral to San Jose’s identity. Yet, Paz-Cedillos points out that contribution and ownership are distinct. She explains that it is possible to celebrate Latino culture while Latino families are priced out, to commission murals while longtime businesses struggle, and to honor East San Jose’s history while making decisions about its future without the involvement of the people who created it.
True cultural preservation, according to Paz-Cedillos, must foster an environment where people can remain, prosper, and influence what comes next. This perspective underpins efforts to establish La Avenida Cultural District along the Alum Rock corridor. She clarifies that La Avenida is not becoming a cultural district because the city designates it; rather, generations of East San Jose residents have already made it one. City recognition would be about acknowledging what is already present and committing to its future.
The vision for such a district includes investment that strengthens existing longtime businesses instead of displacing them, opportunities for artists to earn a living, housing that enables working families to stay, and community institutions that own assets and participate in the economic future of their neighborhoods.
These efforts are already in progress at the Mexican Heritage Plaza and across the Mayfair neighborhood. Through La Placita, an underutilized property is being transformed into a space for arts, health, small businesses, and community life. Additionally, through the Mayfair Neighborhood Trust, in collaboration with the Sí Se Puede Collective, a broader strategy is being advanced to champion affordability. This strategy encompasses affordable housing, community ownership, and the preservation of the spaces, businesses, and institutions that define Mayfair as home, recognizing that cultural preservation holds little meaning if the families who sustain that culture cannot afford to stay.
Paz-Cedillos suggests that Latino Heritage Month should prompt reflection on what children will inherit and the community’s role in building what comes next. This includes considering whether future generations will inherit neighborhoods where they can afford to live, businesses and institutions that belong to their community, and the ability to shape their own city, or if they will only inherit photographs and stories about places that once belonged to them. The October 31 celebration is presented as an act of both remembrance for loved ones and acceptance of responsibility for what comes after.