Every year, on November 1 and 2, a clearing of pine trees transforms into a temporary ceremonial world at the Avila Center just north of Durham, North Carolina. At its entrance stands an archway woven with cempasúchil (Aztec marigold) flowers, bearing the word Mictlán—the Nahuatl name for the land of the dead, where ancestors are believed to rest and from where they return during Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, across Mexico and Mexican communities in the United States.