Already home to the largest Day of the Dead celebration in the country, San Antonio decided to go even bigger this year with its latest addition to the festivities: a statuesque “Catrina,” standing 38.5 feet tall in La Villita’s Maverick Plaza.
Towering over visitors dressed in an elegant purple gown with vibrant floral designs and a matching hat, the statue is currently the largest Catrina in the United States, only second in the world. Puerto Vallarta’s 75.5-foot tall statue first debuted in 2022.
The massive art piece, which the city unveiled earlier this month, was commissioned by chef Johnny Hernandez of La Gloria. Along with Visit San Antonio, Hernandez spearheaded the city’s first Día de los Muertos festival in 2019. In recent years, Hernandez had tapped Mexican artists and brothers Jesus and Amauri Sanabria of Artsumex Colectivo in the Mexico City area to order alebrijes (brightly-colored figurines of animals and mythical creatures) and calaveras (skull figures typically placed on altars during Día de los Muertos) in time for the festival each year.
But brothers are known for much more than their figurines. They’ve gained a reputation for their larger-than-life productions, from oversized bulls, owls, jaguars, and mammoths, to their work designing parade floats for the opening of the 2015 James Bond film, Spectre.
“The [production team] was looking for people who worked with traditional materials, and in the same techniques that have been passed down over generations,” says Amauri.
It’s an artform known as “cartonería” or papier-mâché, using cardboard, newspaper, and paste to create a rigid frame. Throughout Mexico, artisans still use the same techniques to create sculptures for various holidays, including Día de los Muertos. For Amauri and his brother, the trade was passed down to them by their grandfather in Tultepec, a small town north of Mexico City known for its pyrotechnics industry, and the incredible fireworks festival they throw each year.
“We started with little rockets and fireworks, and kept going and going until we’ve gotten to these giant works of art,” Amauri says. “For us it’s an honor to keep using these techniques, but it’s even better when we get to share them. It’s a chance to show people what our grandfather taught us.”
After seeing a Catrina they’d designed, Hernandez reached out to the brothers to ask about whether it would be possible to transport one to San Antonio. Immediately, Amauri says, they started working on sketches and figuring out how to get the finished sculpture to Texas.
“We wanted to give people just a little bit of our Mexican culture on a huge scale,” Amauri says. “We’re showing people that we view life and death a little differently—we see it as something beautiful, elegant, and colorful. This is our way of representing Mexico, and introducing more people to the work we do.”
The design had to be made in multiple parts, and in the cramped quarters of their studio, it also had to be built lying down. For over a month and a half they worked alongside their sister, their cousins, and their friends, building out a wire structure for the base, and slowly adding on layers of paper—roughly 50 pounds of recycled newspaper and crepe paper adhered with a paste made from water and flour—to build the frame.
In the early 20th Century, Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada created “La Calavera Catrina,” an etching of a skeletal figure sporting a European-style hat typically worn by the Mexican upper-class. In the ensuing years, the Catrina became a national symbol of Mexico and an icon associated with Día de los Muertos, referenced by countless artists since. For Amauri, bringing the Catrina statue to San Antonio was a way of sharing the holiday and its traditions, ensuring that it continues to grow even outside of Mexico.
“The Catrina is a representation of the dead, but it’s also a symbol of a holiday that we’re seeing people celebrate all over the world now,” Amauri says. “We’re planting a seed here in San Antonio, and with every year, it will keep growing, and more and more people will be interested in learning what this is all about. It fills me with pride to be a part of it.”
