Holy Week

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So, what shall I tell you about Semana Santa in Antigua? Well there were the alfombras... Already explained those, right? Well there were lots and lots of those, until it seemed that every foot of road was taken up by an alfombra, or was occupied by people building an alfombra, or contained the scattered and smudged ruins of an alfombra. These people are alfombra building machines I tell you.
Then there were the processions. Lots and lots of those too. Each one involved hundreds of people lining the roadside, either wearing their sunday best, or in great purple KKK style robes and caps, shuffling VERRRY slowly along to the sound of a band cranking out funeral dirges (think New Orleans style funeral). These hundreds of people each had a card attached to their chest, with numbers indicating where and when it would be there turn, along with fifty or so compatriots, to shoulder a MASSIVE wooden float holding representations of either Jesus or the Virgin Mary or some station of the cross or some other saint. Having shouldered the thing, they would proceed to shuffle VERRY slowly down the street with the fifty or so others carrying the thing, until at the next block it was time to transfer it all to the next fifty lucky customers. These things would snake around the streets of Antigua all day and night, lasting about eight hours and destroying scores of alfombras in their wake. It was never quite clear to me whether they had any practical purpose, like getting the floats from one church to another, or if they were all form and no content.
That's about ninety percent of Semana Santa. The other thing is the Vellaciones. Each night of the week, a different church gets a turn, gets all its saints out on display, and the entire town spends the night trying to force its way in and out of one door of the church at the same time.
For this, people come from hundreds and even thousands of miles away, drawing with them gang members from Guate City and even from El Salvador, who know easy pickings when they see them.
It is possible that, not being Catholic, I am missing some of the spiritual aspect of the thing. The father of the family I was staying with said something about going to these vellaciones, and when he sees Christ up there on the cross, it's very real for him, the whole passion is there for him to experience, viscerally, he sees the real Christ there, his suffering and his forgiveness and his mercy, and his faith swells up inside him. Or something like that. My spanish probably isn't that good. But I might be missing something, not being Catholic.

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