Semana Santa en Antigua

Antigua, Guatemala is the country´s old capital, (hence the name) and former capital of colonial Central America as a whole.

Not only does it have the beauty you would expect from a Spanish colonial capital, It´s also surrounded by lush hills and volcanos. It´s hard to imagine making somjewhere more scenic even if you planned the entire landscape.

It´s famous for its crazy easter celebrations, or saints week, semana santa, as it´s known here.

One feature of the festivities is the alfombras, or street carpets: Intricate designs and patterns on the streets and the floors of churches, made from sawdust dyed in vibrant colours, flowers, and petals.

http://www.7is7.com/otto/travel/photos/20030504/semanasanta_21alfombrastreet3.html


The construction of these is a mean feat, and the night before good friday nothing really shuts in this town, as everyone´s up to pitch in. Many of these take hours to finish, only to be walked over by the morning processions, after which they just make some more to last till the evenings processions, when they´re marched over again. I´m sure there´s some analogy to all of human endeavour in that, but I can´t be arsed to make it sound good.

Outside every church an impromptu market appears, a labyrynth of stalls with all kinds of foods, meats I can´t even recognise, whole pigs on a spit, sweets and pastries, drinks, and more. My favourite pitches were "Aguas, hay aguas, aguas frias, hay aguas!" and "Incensio Romantico, quatro por cinco"... kind of beats "Three for a fiyvva, three for five paaahnd."

I spent the night wandering the streets and ducking into the bars, buying random foods, and checking the progress of the alfombras.

At three in the morning outside the largest church, a troop of men dressed as Roman legions appears, in two facing lines, leading up to the church. They have uniforms, and spears and standards are held high, and then the Roman cavalry appears. This troop marches through the streets, and without daylight, the sound of horses hooves and spears and boots hitting the cobbled streets, and lights reflecting of the armour that looks passably real if you don´t inspect too closely, you can almost suspend disbelief as you follow the legion as it marches through town, tstopping at the four corners of the town to read the scroll that proclaims the crucifiction of Jesus by Pontius Pilate. To be honest, that was probably my favourite part of the whole thing, imagining the cavalary charging down the streets at a phalanx division, but I don´t think that´s the intent.

At five in the morning as it begins to get light, the main procession begins, as massive floats, carried by thirty or so people on each side all dressed in robes of vidid purple, with statuary and illustratiopns of Jesus on them, are led through the streets, accompanied by children with placards and incence bearers, destroying the alfombras.

In the evening, when Jesus is officially dead, the processions become slower and more sombre, and all are dressed in black: literally hundreds of womenm, of all ages, form the roots to the shoots, are dressed in black with intricate lacey head scarves.

And these things are literally carried around from 5am to 2am, you can´t cross town without gettting stuck alongside one.

At 1am, I was in a a club, dancing to reggaeton, and when I left I was confronted by horders of people in the black robes hoisting their float with Jesus´s body in the air, and hymns being sung.

A strange contrast...