Mankato Latinos celebrate Day of the Dead amid deportations and anti-immigrant rhetoric
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Inside a small studio space on Riverfront Drive, brothers Alex and Justin Ek have been working on artwork they will display at the seventh annual Old Town Day of the Dead festival taking place this Saturday.
The artists show off alebrijes — brightly colored, Mexican folk art sculptures depicting fantastical creatures, which are created using the Mexican art form known as cartonería.
“That takes paper, you crush it up, and you build with cardboard until you have a structure like this, and you pack it so full that you have a pretty strong structure by the end of it,” Justin Ek, 36, said while showing off his giant sculpture of a fish. ”It’s just a process of working with your hands and then making a corn-based paste to paste it, and then paint it.”
Although making alebrijes aren’t part of the traditional customs for el Día de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead, the Eks make these sculptures every year to display at the Old Town Day of the Dead festival as a way to share the cultural heritage of the Mexican side of their family.
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“I love it because of the shock of the scale of the creature,” Ek said. “It’s just a joy to see these fantastic, crazy creatures really bring joy to people, so they’re like vessels for the love that we pour into the event.”
The Eks started Old Town Day of the Dead in 2019 in the parking lot outside of the family’s business, Bellissimo Paint and Coatings. The festival has grown much larger in just a few years, and the city of Mankato now closes three full blocks of Riverfront Drive for it, as more than 100 vendors sell Mexican food, cultural goods and Latino arts and crafts. About 10,000 people are expected to attend.
It’s become a community-wide event that highlights Mexican culture, with Mariachi music, Mexican wrestling and traditional dance performances throughout the day.
“People think they’re in Mexico when they’re at our Day of the Dead event because it is so colorful, so vibrant, so alive during that day. It’s only five hours long,” he said. “But there’s more life in [those] five hours than the rest of the year. The sheer number of people that are there celebrating culture, it’s just very inspiring to be surrounded by that. If you want to feel uplifted by culture and feel a little hope in the world, go see how many people care about this culture because it’s really breathtaking.”
El Día de los Muertos is a time to remember and honor loved ones who’ve passed away. But, Alex Ek, 38, said the festival also helps connect the growing Latino population here with the broader Mankato community. And it helps provide visibility for younger generations to see their culture proudly on display.
“This is amazing that we get to do this every year,” Alex said. “The fact that we get to spread our thoughts and our culture, and that we get to share this with everybody in our community where we grew up, because it wasn’t here when we were growing up. There are kids that are like us that get to experience this and know they’re accepted in their own community is really important to me.”
The festival continues despite challenging times for Minnesota’s Latinos. Latino-owned businesses have struggled financially due to high tariffs placed on cultural goods they import and some have even closed. Many families continue to cope with fear of ICE agents’ aggressive enforcement activity, and with grief after seeing loved ones detained and deported.
The Ek brothers say some of their own relatives were detained and deported by ICE last spring. But, Justin Ek said, continuing the Old Town Day of the Dead festival this year is important, especially now.
“It’s hard, and it affects us really deeply, honestly, and it kind of puts a target on us sometimes, to be doing something so loud and proud,” Justin said, adding that the aggressive ICE tactics and deportations have “changed our lives to be honest, but it doesn’t make us stop.”
“That those hateful voices are feeling bold right now,” Justin Ek continued, “is why these messages of unity and … why we need to have [the event]. We want to make sure people know that we love being in America, and that we want to embrace the things here, but also bring [cultural] things for other people to learn and embrace.”
“We got to just keep doing the right thing, and this is the right thing,” he said.
If you want to go:
What: Old Town Day of the Dead 2026
Where: 300-600 blocks of Riverfront Drive in Mankato
When: Saturday, Oct. 31 from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.
Cost: Free admission
