El Paso: A Walk Among the Dead

La Llorona, Day of the Dead, Concordia Cemetery, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

October 2016


What better way to spend a sparkling Saturday afternoon than walking among the dead, the undead, and the living?

Day of the Dead, Concordia Cemetery, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

Well, I could have done without these. They are veritable demons when dead.

But otherwise, it was a day of beauty, both somber and playful.

Day of the Dead, Concordia Cemetery, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

Day of the Dead, Concordia Cemetery, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

Giant puppets danced through cemetery lanes:

A mariachi band serenaded; La Llorona made a cameo appearance. On the other side of the stone wall is the Chinese section of the cemetery:

Concordia Cemetery honors the Buffalo Soldiers.

Day of the Dead, Concordia Cemetery, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

Chinese residents of El Paso made their final homes here.

Day of the Dead, Concordia Cemetery, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

The Franklin Mountains give the cemetery a sense of place and of calm reserve.

Day of the Dead, Concordia Cemetery, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

Natural flags paid their respects.

Day of the Dead, Concordia Cemetery, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

Drummers drummed -- Echoes in the Park -- who you can find and join - at Upper Tom Lea Park on Friday evenings from May through October.

Day of the Dead, Concordia Cemetery, El Paso, Texas. October 2016.

The Paso del Norte Paranormal Society hosts the annual Day of the Dead event at Concordia Cemetery.


One of Benjamin Alire Saenz' characters resides at Concordia Cemetery. From Carry Me Like Water (1995), about Diego's friend, Mary, who met a violent death:

“[Mary’s] going to be buried at Concordia. That’s where they bury them, the people who don’t have anybody get buried at a section of Concordia. At least they’re still saving spaces in the ground for the Marys of the world.”

… Concordia was filled with weeds and trash delivered there by the El Paso wind. It looked more like a dump than a cemetery. It was only cleaned once a year when the prisoners from the county jail were let out to clean it, but that wasn’t until the summer, and it had been almost a year since its last cleaning, a year’s worth of old newspapers lying up against the gravestones.

For a moment, Concordia Cemetery distracted another character in the same book:

Driving down Interstate 10, Jake took the Juarez exit. He took his eyes off the road for a moment and stared down at Concordia Cemetery, the dead disturbed now by a freeway the locals called the spaghetti bowl. As the freeway curbed around, Juarez was straight ahead. It was so easy to get there, just get in the car, take an exit – Mexico – so easy, he thought.

A slide show below: