When you don’t live in your family’s homeland, it can be a constant battle to stay connected to your past and traditions.

The American way of life has a way of melting everything into one giant pot full of so many ingredients that the flavors are hardly discernible.

But in Sherman Heights, the community isn’t jumping into that big pot. Instead, they’re keeping the Mexican flavor alive.

In this episode, a story about celebrating death as a way of bringing culture back to life.

We stop by the annual Day of the Dead celebration at the Sherman Heights Community Center. The event is billed as the border region’s most traditional and longest running Dia de los Muertos celebration. Then we check in with a pair of artists who built a mobile Day of the Dead altar and came up with a plan to roll the altar through the border crossing and bring flowers they grew in Mexico to a Day of the Dead celebration in Escondido.

Only here can you find a San Diego community working hard at reconnecting with traditions on the other side of the border, and artists in Tijuana bringing that tradition across the border fence.