THE DANCE THAT WALKS THE DEAD HOME.
In the Heights, an ancient ceremony holds the line — and not everyone who answers the call looks the way you might expect
By Jim Towers , MJA. J.D. Editor-in-Chief/ Investigative Photojournalist, Houston Heights Independent.
Houston Heights Independent | Houston, Texas | 2019
Dancers of Danza Azteca Taxcayolotl de Houston kneel at the huehuetl drum during the opening blessing of the Día de los Muertos ceremony, BBVA Compass Bank, Yale Street and West 19th Street, Houston Heights, October 2019. The ritual grounds each performance in prayer before the procession begins. Photograph by Jim Towers / Houston Heights Independent.
Every year, as October gives way to November, the parking lot of the BBVA Compass Bank at Yale Street and West 19th Street transforms into sacred ground.
The drums come first. A huehuetl — the ancient vertical drum of the Mexica — sets the pulse. Then the dancers emerge, their penachos towering overhead in cascades of pheasant and peacock feather, gold and crimson catching the last of the late-afternoon sun. Children stop. Phones come out. Traffic slows on Yale.
This is Danza Azteca Taxcayolotl de Houston, and they have been doing this long before any bank occupied that corner.
The group performs the opening ceremony of the Casa Ramirez Folk Art Gallery's annual Día de los Muertos celebration — one of the oldest and most authentic observances of the holiday in Houston's Heights neighborhood. After the ceremony, they lead a procession down the sidewalk to Casa Ramirez on 19th Street, where altars will be lit, copal will burn, and the community will gather to honor those who came before.
Among the dancers that evening was a face that surprised more than a few onlookers — a white man, fully regalia'd, moving in step with the others. He didn't hesitate to explain himself.
Danza Azteca Taxcayolotl de Houston performs the Día de los Muertos opening ceremony, BBVA Compass Bank, Yale Street and West 19th Street, Houston Heights, October 2019. Photograph © 2026 Jim Towers / Houston Heights Independent.
He had been brought into the tradition by family members and friends. What he found there, he said, was something he hadn't expected and couldn't walk away from. Keeping these traditions alive, he told HHI, is uniquely special to him — not as an outsider looking in, but as someone who feels a direct line and connection to something much older than any of the divisions people put between themselves.
"No matter what anybody says, these celebrations, these dances have been going on for hundreds of years. That matters. That connection matters."
He is not an anomaly. He is, in fact, the point.
Danza Azteca is not an ethnicity. It is a practice — a set of prayers in movement that the Mexica carried long before colonial borders were drawn, long before Houston existed, long before the Heights was platted and sold in lots. The tradition doesn't ask for your papers. It asks only that you show up, learn the steps, and remember.
Members of Danza Azteca Taxcayolotl de Houston perform during the annual Día de los Muertos opening ceremony in the parking lot of BBVA Compass Bank at Yale Street and West 19th Street, Houston Heights, October 2019. The group led a procession from the bank to Casa Ramirez Folk Art Gallery following the ceremony. Photograph by Jim Towers / Houston Heights Independent.
That is a lesson the Heights has always known, even when it doesn't say so out loud. This is a neighborhood of traditions layered on traditions — the Odd Fellows still meet, the fish fries still run, the pets still get blessed at the church on the corner. But the pressures are real. The culture that gave the Heights its particular texture — working-class, multi-generational, rooted — is disappearing under the same forces reshaping every older urban neighborhood in America.
A dancer of Danza Azteca Taxcayolotl de Houston performs mid-sequence during the Día de los Muertos ceremony, Houston Heights, October 2019. The dance culminated in a sparrow ceremonial rite in which a dancer raised a smoking copal pot in offering. Photograph by Jim Towers / Houston Heights Independent..
The institutions that once anchored neighborhood life are gone, one by one. The mom-and-pops that lined 19th Street have been replaced by the things that replace them everywhere. And the people who remember what was there before — who remember what the neighborhood felt like, smelled like, sounded like — are watching. And some of them are dancing.
Members of Danza Azteca Taxcayolotl de Houston gather in formation at the opening of the dance sequence, BBVA Compass Bank, Yale Street and West 19th Street, Houston Heights, October 2019. The group performed several dances before leading the procession to Casa Ramirez Folk Art Gallery.Photograph by Jim Towers / Houston Heights Independent.
Casa Ramirez has held that line for decades. So has Danza Azteca Taxcayolotl. Every fall, they meet in a bank parking lot at Yale and 19th, and they walk the dead home together.
That, too, is the Heights.
Danza Azteca Taxcayolotl de Houston, Día de los Muertos ceremony, Houston Heights, October 2019. Photograph © 2026 Jim Towers / Houston Heights Independent.
The procession begins — Danza Azteca Taxcayolotl de Houston, Día de los Muertos ceremony, Houston Heights, October 2019. Photograph © 2026 Jim Towers/ Houston Heights Independent.
Reporting from the Heights. I'm James Torres, Houston Heights Independent.
Jim Towers, MJA. JD., is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Houston Heights Independent. All photographs © Jim Towers / Houston Heights Independent. All rights reserved.
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