Easter in Antigua, Guatemala

by Ken McCormick

The city of La Antigua Guatemala hosts the largest religious festival in the western hemisphere during Semana Santa, Easter Week. Antigua, or Old Guatemala City, was the capital of Guatemala from 1543 until 1773, when it was so heavily damaged by an earthquake that the government abandoned the city for a new, more secure location. The government left behind it the extensive ruins of numerous palacios, churches, monasteries, and convents constructed in the massive earthquake-resistant but unfortunately not earthquake-proof style of the Spanish colonial period. Many of the beautiful old churches have been painstakingly rebuilt, repaired, and restored time and again over the centuries as new destructive earthquakes have struck, the most recent in 1976.

Some churches, such as the Templo de San Francisco El Grande, which dates from 1579, and the Templo de Nuestra Señora de La Merced, originally constructed in 1548, are fully restored and still in use, although their attached cloisters still lie in ruins. Others, such as the huge La Recolección, lie in a state of magnificent ruin and serve today only as rather high-priced tourist attractions, although it is only fair to say that the sight of the collapsed up to ten-foot-thick walls and arches is well worth the price.

The cathedral, final resting place of both the notorious conquistador Don Pedro de Alvarado and the author of the classic history of the conquest of New Spain, Bernal Diaz del Castillo, shared with the cathedral of Mexico City the distinction of being one of the two largest cathedrals in Latin America. Today, it is a curious mixture of both living church and ruin, with the impressive baroque façade restored, two restored chapels serving as the Church of San José, and the main body of what originally constituted the cathedral now a roofless but spectacular ruin.

The effect of the government’s abandonment of the city was to remove it from the mainstream of economic life, and to thus spare it from the normal cycle of the razing of older structures for replacement with ever more modern and functional ones, so that the city remains today a virtual architectural time capsule, maintaining its colonial character throughout, a small, quiet city of tile roofs, cupolas, and cobblestone streets.

During the Lenten season and Semana Santa, those cobblestone streets fill with processions of thousands of cucuruchos, the costumed members of a dozen area churches. The centerpieces of these processions are huge wooden andas, ornately-carved wooden platforms as finely finished as any piece of antique furniture upon which are carried life-sized holy images of Jesuchristo, Maria Santisima, and the saints, many of which are beautifully executed and which date as far back as 1578. The largest of the andas weigh 7,000 pounds, and together with their images and other ornamentation, assume the dimensions of tractor-trailers. These are carried upon the shoulders of the cucuruchos through the narrow, cobblestone streets of the city and nearby communities for up to twelve hours at a time.

The height of the andas is limited by the height of the telephone wires and electric wires beneath which they must pass, and by the heights of the church ceilings and doors, for the andas are assembled inside the churches, and are part of the holy vigils which are held in the churches prior to the processions. The processions begin and end inside the churches. With the inclusion of the holy image atop a display platform made of fiberglass, coated foam plastic, or some other lightweight material placed upon the wooden anda, the full height of the float will usually be about twelve to fourteen feet. The church ceilings are normally high enough for the cucuruchos to be able to lift this and carry it, but it will have to be placed upon steel rails set into special holes in the floor to be slid out the doorway of the church.

The church of San Francisco has a wall around the courtyard of the church with a main gate and a side gate. The main gate is high enough to allow passage of the anda, but fronts on a narrow street that will not permit the forty-four-foot length of the anda to fully exit the church grounds. The anda must therefore squeeze through the narrow side gate which gives out onto an intersection that allows sufficient room for maneuver. The procession must therefore pause after marching from the altar to the front door of the church, and then again after parading through the large courtyard to once again place the anda on steel rails set in the ground, and to carefully slide its ninety-six inch breadth and twelve-foot height through the small side gate into the street outside, where it is again lifted onto the shoulders of the cucuruchos.

The anda of the church of San Francisco is at forty-four feet long somewhat lighter than the larger ones, requiring only sixty bearers, unlike those of La Merced and the Escuela de Cristo, which each require eighty, but it still weighs a few thousand pounds, and is certainly not going to be moved by one man acting alone. For this reason, the bearers must accomplish everything acting in unison. To lift the anda, they must prepare according to the shouted commands of the director, and all haul up as one upon the shouted command of “¡Arriba!”

The streets through which the procession will pass are decked out with purple banners and most notably with alfombras, or “carpets” which are constructed by families and businesses along the route a few hours prior to the passage of the procession. The idea of these is to adorn the passage of the holy image. Alfombras may consist of neat beds of pine needles overlaid with flowers and possibly fruit in a formal design, but usually they are made of colored sawdust. People buy the sawdust and sift it and add dye to it, usually a day or two before the procession is scheduled to pass. Two-by-fours are laid out to delineate the area in which the alfombra will be made. Since the streets are cobblestone and very uneven, often almost v-shaped in cross section, it may be necessary to start the process of making an alfombra by filling in the area with gravel or raw sawdust and leveling it out to the edges of the boards.

Colored sawdust is poured into areas blocked off with boards to make sharp bands of color. Stencils are then used to pour contrasting colors on top of the prepared sections of color to create designs, usually floral designs reminiscent of oriental rugs or even stylized pictorial designs of such subjects as birds, and sometimes words and phrases. There is no fixed, traditional style. Occasionally, a modern art alfombra is created in sawdust. As the alfombras are created, they are immediately sprayed with water to keep them damp so that the wind will not blow the sawdust around, and so that when the two-by-fours are removed, the edges will remain crisp.

The church brotherhoods create alfombras on the floors of churches, and these tend to be more elaborate, sometimes entailing actual representational paintings of religious subjects. People enlarge the alfombras inside the churches by adding offerings of fruit all around the edges. All elements of the procession pass around the edges of the alfombras until the main anda arrives. The anda goes right down the middle, destroying the ephemeral adornments.

The approach of a procession before Good Friday is usually heralded by a troop of cucuruchos dressed as Roman soldiers tapping out a march on a drum and blowing horns. After the crucifixion ceremony on Good Friday, flights of angels on small andas may signal the approach. This is followed by silent files of cucuruchos in their purple or black robes, with either hoods or burnooses as headgear, and sometimes penitents in black robes with high, pointed black hoods that cover their faces just like the KKK uniforms which imitate them. These do not all just parade past, but the heralds will march forward and then stop. The robed figures file in bit by bit until the area is dense with them.

The first sight of the approaching main part of the procession with the big anda will be the clouds of incense rising above the surrounding buildings. The censers travel a bit ahead of the main part of the procession, possibly in part because it is hard enough work to carry a 7,000 pound platform the size of a tractor-trailer without having to breathe heavy, choking clouds of incense the whole while. With the crowds of kids swinging the heavy, smoking censers come other robed kids or men carrying ornate silver or gold crosses on long handles and labarums with the insignia of the participating church hermandades.

The sound of the band will be heard, too, as the cloud of incense approaches. The church bands carry lots of heavy artillery. There is, for example, usually a section of three to five tubas, but maybe only two or three trumpets. There are two or three base drums that beat in unison, and two or three sets of cymbals that crash in unison with the base drums.

Much of the time when the procession is on the march it will be only the drums and their accompanying cymbals beating out a slow, lugubrious march. There will be a * BOOM * of the base drums and cymbals followed by a long drum roll of the smaller drums, then another * BOOM * followed by another long drum roll, then a solemn *BOOM*, *BOOM*, *BOOM*. But from a distance, the sound of the smaller drums is lost, and all that will be heard will be the base drums’ infectious beat, BOOM (pause), BOOM (pause), BOOM BOOM BOOM.

As the censers pass and the cloud of incense clears, the uncanny sight of the giant anda, like a living piece of architecture that has sprouted millipede legs, appears, swaying unevenly and rather drunkenly through the narrow and uneven streets. The giant andas all carry images of Jesus. Before Good Friday, it will be Jesus carrying the cross to Golgotha. After the crucifixion ceremony at the cathedral, it will be an image of Jesus in a sepulcher, usually surrounded by angels, pictured with God the Father, or with a weeping Maria on the anda with his body. On Easter Day, he emerges from the church of San Pedro to cheers, flowers, and fireworks, in a white robe as the smiling resurrected Christ.

Jesús de la Caída, the holy image which is carried to Antigua from San Bartolo, was sculpted in 1640 by the artist Pedro de Mendosa. During the Spring of 2002, it was sent out of the church for restoration work, and there was a great outcry throughout the city. Church authorities had to meet with representatives of the agitated laity to reassure them that the popular image was not being spirited out of the city to a museum somewhere, and to respond to questions about the restoration process. They had to actually take them to the workshop in which the image was located to show them that everything was alright.

I suspect that much of the anxiety involved the idea that Jesus’ skin might be restored to its original state as a part of the overall restoration process. This is why, I think, the church authorities had to describe all the work that would be done, and to show that it was limited. The finish of the images darkens over time, and the image of Jesus has gone from being that of a Spanish-looking white guy to being a black-bearded man with a brownish skin tone more like that of the average Guatemalan.

This issue of the skin color of Jesus and other holy figures has been a big issue south of the Río Grande ever sine the miraculous vision of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico shortly after the conquest. The famous “Black Christ” of Esquipulas, Guatemala is said by some to have been modeled after an African by the artist, but it is believed by most authorities that the image has simply turned black from centuries of exposure to the smoke of candles and incense and the oils of the hands of reverent worshipers. Nonetheless, the Black Christ is one of the most important destinations of pilgrimages in Latin America, and is credited with numerous miraculous cures. The gradual darkening of the skins of the holy images of Christ seems to be regarded by the common people of Guatemala as a sort of very gradual miracle by which God signals his acceptance of his children of Native American blood.

The image of Jesús Nazareno del Desamparo of the cathedral was sculpted in 1913. It shows Jesus as a white guy with brown hair. All the older images have black hair and a brownish skin tone. La Merced has an impressive collection of antique images of Jesus in the various stations of the cross. These will be in the cortege of the giant anda that carries their most important image, the consecrated Imagen de Jesús Nazareno del Templo de Nuestra Señora de la Merced, sculpted in 1650 for La Merced by the artist Alonso de la Paz.

The Jesús Nazareno de Santa Catalina Bobadilla dates from 1632, and is carried the three kilometers from the town of Santa Catalina Bobadilla to tour Antigua in a ten-hour marathon that is the first procession of the Lenten season, occurring on the first Sunday of Lent. Jesús Nazareno del Templo de Nuestra Señora de Santa Ana is by an unknown artist, and can be dated no more precisely than to the Spanish colonial period. Jesús Nazareno del Perdón of the church of San Francisco was created by maestro Don Carlos de Bolaños in 1630. Jesús Nazareno de la Humildad of the church of San Cristóbal el Bajo was sculpted by a Peruvian artist in 1578. The church served a Native American congregation, and the published literature of the church makes a point of the fact that the consecrated image was created with the facial features of an indigene and an overall olive coloration.

The cathedral’s sculpture of the Santo Cristo Yacente, also known as the Señor Sepultado, is much admired by art critics, and dates from the colonial period. The Milagrosa Imagen del Señor Sepultado of the church of San Felipe dates from the seventeenth century, and is credited with numerous miracles. The Escuela de Cristo’s Señor Sepultado is known to have been created no later than 1644.

The main anda with sixty to eighty bearers and six to eight men in front and behind trying to control the speed and direction, is often followed by a smaller anda which is borne by forty women, and which carries an image of María Santísima. The larger andas are accompanied by men carrying long poles with ornate tridents on the ends to hook under overhead wires to force them upwards to allow the passage of the images, which, including the shoulder height of the bearers, may reach as high as eighteen to nineteen feet. Still, the main image will occasionally snag on a wire, and the director will have to command the bearers to march in place so as not to snap the wire, and then in order clear the wire, to lower into as low a squat as possible without going so low as to lose the strength to carry the heavy display. The bearers are packed together so closely that they are only able to move in unison. This imparts a swaying motion to the anda as feet move in unison on each side.

The cortege may also include such figures as Mary Magdalene and Saint John. The band follows very closely, also, playing the most sorrowful and stately of dirges. The only one I was able to identify was played on the Saturday after Good Friday when a weeping Maria of Mourning goes out in her own procession through the streets in search of her lost son. It was the dirge that contains the words:

Pray for the dead

And the dead

will pray for you...

The andas are rigged with wiring and fuse boxes on their undersides, and at night, the band is followed closely by one or two kids pushing a Honda generator that powers floodlights mounted on the andas. Many cucuruchos also carry candles at night. When processions arrive in front of the cathedral at night to pause with the giant anda swaying rhythmically back and forth in place while a hymn is sung, the streets and the steps of the cathedral are lighted by hundreds of people holding candles. The Escuela de Cristo, in addition to its impressive andas for its Señor Sepultado and Most Holy Maria of the Mourning, has small, wheeled floats that carry cheesy images of angels, saints, and so on. These carry their own humming generators. The one which carries a skeletal Death seated upon the throne of the world carries lights within the skull to light up the red eye sockets. These floats fortunately precede the main cortege by a few blocks so as not to detract from the emotional effect of the main procession. Processions are followed closely by a swarm of vendors carrying balloons, big, heavy nets of rubber balls, racks full of sunglasses, candy, et cetera. Immediately thereafter follows a municipal dump truck and a front-end loader with a three-to-five-man cleanup crew to dispose of the remains of the ruined alfombras.

The shortest procession of the season proceeds from the cathedral and lasts only two and one-half hours. It travels twenty blocks before it arrives back in front of the cathedral, or twenty-two blocks if you count double-length blocks as two. La Merced carries its 7,000-pound anda seventy-five blocks on Good Friday, and ninety-three blocks on Palm Sunday. The church of the nearby town of San Felipe makes a heroic effort, also, in carrying its anda sixty-one blocks through Antigua after carrying it the kilometer and a half from San Felipe. The endurance prize has to go to San Bartolo, though, which has to carry the anda three kilometers to Antigua to then tour ninety-three blocks of the city.

The undersides of the andas have leather-padded cutouts for the shoulders of the bearers, but anyone who has done the arithmetic will note that 7,000 pounds divided amongst eighty bearers means that each bearer must carry eighty-seven and a half pounds. This is an average, as taller bearers will usually be heaving more weight. Cucuruchos take turns carrying the heavier andas every couple of blocks. This is done seamlessly, one bearer at a time slipping out to be replaced by a new bearer. This rests bearers for the long haul of up to ten to twelve hours, and also gives everyone an opportunity to participate in the carrying of the heavy float. To carry the heavy weight is to imitate the burden of Christ bearing the cross. Christ carries the cross, and the bearers carry Christ.

I asked one woman why it was that the people of Latin America, Spain, and Italy carried holy images in procession, whereas this was not done elsewhere. She thought a moment and then replied with tears in her eyes that “we carry the images to feel Christ living within our lives.” Tears in the eyes are not all that uncommon as the processions pass. The events are received with devout attention by most of the spectators.

The desire to experience and imitate the actions of Jesus may be seen in extreme form on Easter elsewhere in Latin America, where some men participate in a ceremony in which large nails are driven through their hands and feet to fasten them to wooden crosses from which they will hang for some while in a contemplative state. For centuries, certain individuals such as Saint Francis of Assisi have, without the benefit of such a cermony, exhibited the stigmata, the bleeding wounds of Christ, on their hands, feet, and sometimes sides. The most recent publicized case of this occurred in Italy during the 1990’s. The subject of the experience was observed over some time by medical scientists, who attibuted to wounds to mental phenomena to which they gave a name, as though the name were an explanation. When asked what it felt like to experience the stigmata, the subject described the sensation of what he called “ecstasy.”

The only people along the route to mar the dignity of the procession are foreign tourists who jump out into the middle of the procession carrying thousands of dollars worth of photographic equipment and run excitedly back and forth, lining up interesting camera angles and snap, snap, snapping away right in the middle of everything. Guatemalans who try to cross the road through the processions are turned back by cucuruchos, but no one says anything to the shutterbugs. I have to wonder what they are going to do with all the photos. I’d like to slap their silly heads.

There are twenty-five processions in Antigua through the season, including a few children’s processions. The children do not carry andas, of course. Small costumed sons also participate as cucuruchos by accompanying their fathers who are bearing the andas, sometimes attached to their fathers by a cord and walking beneath the anda. This is not as dangerous as it sounds. The andas are hollow, so the only really dangerous place in a mishap would be under the edge. Even in this case, there are sturdy wheels attached to the undersides in such a way as to protrude about six inches at the center. Still, it wouldn’t be a good idea to lose control of a 7,000 pound anda in the midst of a densely–packed crowd.

The observances peak on Holy Thursday and Good Friday. People call these the days of no sleep. Observances begin in a park between Antigua and San Felipe at 3:00 AM when the sentencing of Jesus of Nazareth is acted out. Cucuruchos dressed as Roam Soldiers then parade through the streets of the city proclaiming the sentence until 6:00 AM, when the giant anda of the church of La Merced emerges to proceed through the city for the next eight and one-half hours. It is followed by processions from the cathedral and two other churches.

The Church of San Cristóbal el Bajo has got a theater group some of whose members grow beards for their parts in their own passion play, “Pregón Romano,” and almost all of whom run or bicycle to get in shape for the physical demands of Good Friday. They own three “Roman chariots,” and they rent horses to pull these through the town as they perform their twenty-minute play thirty times in thirty different locations around the city on Good Friday. Actors playing the parts of Roman soldiers also march through the streets to the sound of a drum driving Jesus and the other condemned to the site of the crucifixion. In front of the cathedral at the crucifixion ceremony, hundreds sing “forgive your people, oh, Lord.”

By the time the big procession of the Escuela de Cristo reaches the candlelit Plaza Mayor at about eleven o’clock at night, the plaza and surrounding streets are thronged with not only what seems to be every resident of Antigua, but also people from all over Guatemala, in addition to the usual foreign tourists. It becomes almost impossible to move through the plaza, but as this is what might be called in the ‘states a “family event,” all but the numerous pick-pockets are notably mellow and courteous.

Some northerners I have spoken with find this whole spectacle quite odd, and perhaps rather droll. I know that there is a mutual feeling on the part of the Guatemalans. To them, Holy Week is at least as big an event as is the Christmas celebration in the North, but where Christmas in the North involves a lot of shopping and buying activity, the preparations in Guatemala are more concerned with preparing and organizing decorations and activities, and while the celebration of Christmas in the North pretty much all takes place in one big frenzy over a twenty-four hour period, the Lenten-Easter observances go on for six weeks.

I am sure the really strange part for the Guatemalans to ponder, though, is the fact that the Easter observances in the North that occur off church property are dominated by what might best be termed “pre-Christian” fertility symbolism involving rabbits and eggs. While the people in front of the cathedral in Antigua are singing “forgive your people, oh, Lord,” the song being sung in the North is:

Here comes Peter Cottontail

hoppin’ down the bunny trail….