Holy cow, Holy Week (Semana Santa) in Guatemala

Processions and Jesus rule the roads during Semana Santa. Don´t try to drive.

Happy belated Easter, everyone. As you may well know, this part of the world is predominantly Catholic, and Holy Week/Semana Santa (in particular, the Holy Thursday and Good Friday leading up to Easter) is especially important. Most people will have the entire week before Easter off from work. Sweet! What is particularly weird to me is that no one really makes a big deal out of Easter itself. Everything is open as usual. Semana Santa is really about remembering Christ´s sacrifice, so I guess by the time the resurrection comes around people are kind of relieved. Of course, Semana Santa has taken on a really commercial, Christmas-y type feel, but it´s still a really interesting thing for someone who has never seen it before.

I have learned that, in Guatemala at least, Semana Santa means the following things:

(1) Processions
Basically, the processions consist of floats with statues of Jesus and Mary from the local churches decorated with new clothes and flowers, carried on the shoulders of the repetant. Yes, you too can pay to carry the heavy ass float to repent for a whole year of sins! The paying-to-be-repetent part is all a bit sketchy to me, personally, but ah well!

On Holy Thursday, you´ll have floats with Jesus carrying the cross (above), and on Good Friday there are floats with crying Marys and bloody, recently deceased Jesuses. Despite the frequent stops in traffic, the processions are very pretty. People will also make carpets of colored sawdust and flowers in the streets so that Jesus and Mary can step out in style. It´s lovely. Apparently, the place to go for processions in Guatemala is touristy Antigua, but I didn´t want to brave the trip... (see Number 3 below).

(2) Bread and Sweet Garbanzo Beans
Suck it up...you will eat nothing else during Semana Santa. Actually, this is another one of my bold-faced lies. Just keeping you on your toes, people! Sure, you eat other stuff, but all people talk about is the bread and sweet garbanzo. Especially the garbanzo, garbanzo, garbanzo! Bakeries will actually stop baking all other products and just sell the Semana Santa bread (as I learned the hard way when I attempted to buy sandwich bread on Holy Thursday), which is usually a big corona bread that is sweet and yellow. It´s tasty, dude. The tooth-achingly sweet stew of garbanzo beans is tasty, too...but I have a slight aversion to them now. This is because, when we learned to make them at school during a cooking class, I sliced my fingers open cutting the huge block of sugar used to sweeten them. Hard not to think about fingers gushing with blood when I think about sweet garbanzo now.

(3) Vacation for the whole friggin´ country
Holy crap (no pun intended). Unless you are a glutton for punishment, like running around trying to find an empty hotel room, or enjoy eating your knees (or someone else´s) on a more-crowded-than-usual chicken bus, don´t leave for any type of vacation during Semana Santa. Indeed, the news is filled with stories about some bus flipped over or how people got trampled to death at the beach. Fun! For the love of Jesus (literally!)!

(4) Remembering the Passion of Christ...in kinda weird ways
This is actually the point of Semana Santa, of course, and it´s actually very neat to see it in action. People really go all out. Occasionally in weird ways. Each town has its own traditions, and I actually spent Holy Thursday and Friday in Cantel, a small town just outside of Xelá, because my teacher invited me to her house there (¡que amable!). They have a tradition of gathering in the town square and putting on the passion play all frickin´weekend. Not weird, right? Well, on Friday, they have the "Romans" on horseback (real horses here!) and groups of townspeople take sticks and try to beat the crap out of the horses and "Romans" (for crucifying Jesus, of course). OK!!! It was seriously one of the strangest/most brutal displays I have ever seen...but I guess people do weird things in the name of religion all the time, right?

How do I call the ASPCA in Guatemala? Better question: Is there an ASPCA in Guatemala?

Some other fun images from Semana Santa:

Yes, I took a picture with Jesus. Erica (my classmate and fellow Semana Santa first-timer) and I just couldn´t resist. Obviously, it´s quite an honor to play Jesus...but you have to commit to the job for 7 years! This Jesus is pretty new...he has 5 more years to go!



In Cantel´s passion play, Judas is always recognizable by the cool bread on his back. This is real bread...Erica and I are trying to eat it, although Judas moved, so it looks like I am trying to kiss him. Of course, I´m not (who wants to kiss Judas, anyway?!?).


There is usually a Children´s Procession during Semana Santa, where the kids have to carry the float. The poor kids in Cantel could barely hoist this sucker up. It was lovely though.


This is from a procession in Xelá, courtesy of Christian, source of many a cool picture. At many of the Semana Santa processions, there will be a girl chosen to represent Mary. Virginity is a prerequisite, of course (in case you are thinking about applying next year).