This Day of the Dead Altar was built in honor and celebration of those who have come before, and particularly to honor and commemorate those who “died before their time” including: 1. the thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans of the U.S. who took their own lives, 2. those who died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in an attempt to flee the violence in their native Latin American countries, 3. the Native Americans who killed themselves (40% being children and youth under 24) registering the higher rates of suicide than any other ethnic or racial group in the country, 4. the loss and disappearance of hundreds of species from the face of our Mother Earth due to the large scale environmental destruction caused by humans, 5. the children