Easter Sunday

I had a great time observing the Easter festivities in Xela this morning. While it was unusual to spend Easter abroad for the first time and to miss out on the services I am used to at home and at college, I felt a strong sense of community with the hundreds of people who turned out to watch the processions.

The main parade for Easter Sunday departed after Mass at the Iglesia San Nicolás Jesús de la Resurrección, pictured here. (The trees in this picture are in the Parque Benito Juárez, a really nice park across the street from the church.)

The street in front of the church was decorated with two really beautiful, intricate designs made from seeds of many different colors. The designs were then destroyed when the people carrying the floats walked over them. The creation and then destruction of such intricate patterns reminded me of Buddhist sand mandalas.

Here's the second, longer design.

When the priest came out from the church to start the parade, he began by blessing many children and some adults. He started out blessing them one-by-one with Holy Water, but when lots of people started coming to him, he used an aspergillum (shown below).

Soon after, when the floats were carried out of the church, he blessed the floats themselves and then all of the men and women carrying them by sprinkling them with Holy Water using the aspergillum.

The first float showed Jesus resurrected and standing in front of the empty tomb. The plaque at the front includes the words of the angels who met Mary Magdalene and the other women at the tomb: "Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen!" (Luke 24:5-6).

This procession, as with the Good Friday and Holy Saturday processions, moved very, very slowly. The pace was about 25-30 minutes per city block, and the length of the parade route meant that the procession took 4-5 hours in total. I imagine the float bearers will have shoulder bruises for several days!

The second float showed the Coronation of Mary as the Queen of Heaven. While the first float was carried by men in suits, this float was carried by women in traditional Mayan dress.

A marching band came after the two large floats.

Later in the day, I saw a smaller parade, closer to the center of the city. It began with two floats of angels declaring the resurrection, holdings signs saying "Alleluia!" and "He Has Risen!"

The floats were followed by members of various religious Catholic organizations in the town, each carrying the banner for their specific group.

Finally, starting at 4 pm, there was an outdoor service at the Iglesia El Calvario. The priest stood on the east (front) porch, and the hymns were played on an impressively loud sound system.

Near the Iglesia El Calvario, I saw lots of cars decorated for the occasion. Here are two of the best I saw. First, a truck with an "Alleluia!" sign.

Next, a pickup with an empty tomb and drawings of lambs.

Holy Week, Part III - Holy Saturday

The main Holy Saturday procession began at the Iglesia El Calvario, which is near my homestay. It began with three acolytes and two small floats.

The main float was preceded by a large group of women. The young girls wore white dresses, while the older women wore black and covered their hair with black lace.

In the Good Friday procession, I saw only three women (two girls walking with the priest, and one woman in the band) among hundreds of men. I believe there were so many women in the Holy Saturday procession because the float focused on the Virgin Mary, with the central importance of motherhood giving women a part in the parade.

Here is a picture of the main float. Mary is shown in the form of the "Sorrowful Mother" / "Lady of Sorrows" in the middle of the float, with a dagger piercing her heart to represent her grief.

The back of the float shows the bloody, empty cross. The plaque reads, "In Life and in Death, protect us, Great Woman."

(There was a full marching band at the end of the procession, but all you can see in this photo is the timpani drum at the front of the band.)

Holy Week, Part II - Good Friday

I had been told that Holy Week and Easter in Xela would include some impressive public events, but the Good Friday processions still exceeded my already heightened expectations!

The main procession of the day ended near the cathedral in the Parque Central, which is where I viewed it. It began with what seemed to be a mobile version of the Stations of the Cross. All of these floats were pushed along by men in purple vestments.

At the end of these smaller floats came a very large float, featuring a statue of Jesus bearing the Cross. It was carried on the shoulders of men wearing the same purple vestments as seen above. The float bearers carried metal rods with them, and from time to time they would pause and set the float on top of the rods in order to give their shoulders a break.

Here is a picture of the float after it had been carried into the main part of the square. You can also see the marching band that followed.

As it turns out, Good Friday is not only observed with somber religious events but also with some more upbeat community activities. There was a festival-like atmosphere all day, with lots of families spending time in the Parque Central, visiting vendors' booths, and eating street food. Some food carts are shown here.

Holy Week, Part I

Holy Week begins today.  It is a very significant part of the year for most Guatemalan people, and its observance involves many processions and religious services.  It is so significant, in fact, that I started seeing ceremonies on Friday.  This is a picture of a procession that took place in the Parque Central on Friday afternoon.  It was very festive, seeming a bit out of place during the mournful season of Lent, but Holy Week itself begins with a joyful procession, after all.

Last night (Saturday night), I saw two religious services in the Parque El Calvario, an appropriately named park for Lent and Holy Week.  The first was held in the Iglesia Del Calvario, the Catholic church in the park.  The sanctuary was filled, and congregants spilled out onto the porch.

The second service took place on the basketball court in the park.  The preacher spoke very fast, and he was so heavily amplified that I could hear him in my room a couple of blocks away.  As far as I could tell, this was an evangelical service.  The evangelical Protestant movement is rapidly growing in popularity in Guatemala, and it was interesting to see the juxtaposition of traditional and emerging religious movements in the same park last night.

Zunil

Last week I took a short trip to Zunil, a town a few miles outside of the city of Quetzaltenango.  The population is entirely indigenous.

The first sight I visited was the church.  The church is about 150 years old, though it has occasionally undergone major renovation following earthquakes.  The façade incorporates agriculture-related design elements, such as vines winding up the columns, to demonstrate the importance of agriculture for the city of Zunil and the surrounding countryside.  It's one of the greatest crop-producing regions in Guatemala.  Also, the church is well known in the area because it still has its original bells.  Three had been removed for maintenance the day I visited (see the scaffolding on the right), but one of the bells was still in place and visible.

The wooden altarpiece of the church is original.  It is designed to hold statues in each of its niches, though some of the statues had been removed when I visited in preparation for Lenten/Holy Week processions.  You can see one statue that had been removed, for example, in the bottom left corner of this photograph.

After the church, I visited a shrine for a local Mayan saint, San Simón.  People come to pray to him, to light candles in front of him, and to bring him money and gifts, including cigars and liquor.  The effigy is well cared for--every night he is carried to bed, and every morning he is returned to his seat in the shrine.  The attendants occasionally change his clothes, too, though his is always in some sort of suit, hat, bandana, and sunglasses.

San Simón's location changes every year during Holy Week.  So when I saw him, it was his last week in this location before being carted off in a large procession to a new home.

City view / Juan Harvard

Here are some photos of the city and the surrounding mountains, taken from the roof of my homestay.  The first photo is taken to the west, looking toward the historical center of the city.

The second photo is taken to the east, mainly featuring the Cementerio General just across the street from my house.  This cemetery features a lot of pastels and bright colors, a change from the gray-and-black cemeteries I'm used to.

Also, there's a prep school on the way from my homestay to my school that caught my eye...

Lit Fest / Café con Cortesía

Last week, from Wednesday to Friday (March 26-28), Xela hosted the 22nd annual International Congress for Central American Literature (Congreso Internacional de Literatura Centroamericana, or CILCA).  In the afternoons, when my classes were finished, I walked a few blocks to the Casa de la Cultura and the Casa No'j, the two cultural centers in the Parque Central where the lit fest was held.  This year's Congress was dedicated to indigenous poetry, specifically in honor of Humberto Ak'abal, a Mayan poet from Guatemala.

I've been told that Guatemala doesn't really have a strong literary culture.  One American who has lived here for several years pointed out to me that the librerias (allegedly, bookstores) in town have a few hundred books but make most of their money on notebooks, pens, and other office/school supplies.  She also noted that there aren't any big bookstores in Xela, except for a place that caters almost exclusively to the self-help genre.  In contrast, however, this literature festival gave me the impression that Guatemala, and Central American more generally, has an enthusiastic corps of authors, editors, publishers, and readers.

Here's a picture of part of the "bookstore" section of the festival.  The doors at the end of the hall open into the room where most of the readings took place.

On my way back from the book fair, I saw a sign that reminded me of a café chalkboard that my French teacher alerted me to a few months ago (http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/news/world-europe-25347423).  It looks like the Guatemaltecos, like the French, prefer their café con cortesía.

Getting settled in Xela

I'm currently in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, known locally as "Xela" (shay-luh), an abbreviation of the Mayan name for the city.  It's the second-largest city in Guatemala, with approximately 225,000 people.  Guatemala City, with 1.1 million people, is much larger than Xela, but it seems to have less to offer for tourists and has higher crime rates.

For the moment, I'm doing an immersion program at a language school, with five hours of language classes on weekdays and a homestay with a Guatemalan family.  There are about 40 students at the school, including students on exchange programs from the University of Virginia, the College of St. Benedict, and St. John's University.  Most students are here independently, though, and range in age from around 20 to 80 years old.

The classes take place in a courtyard.  Here is a picture of the desks:

And here's a picture of the garden:

Among the most impressive buildings in Quetzaltenango are the churches.  The church closest to my house is in the Parque El Calvario, and while often known as the Church of the Calvary, its official name is Church of Our Lady of Solitude.  It is located right next to the city's cemetery, so there are many funerals in this church.

The biggest church in town is the cathedral in the Parque Central, which is the cathedral for the Archdiocise of Los Altos Quetzaltenango-Totonicapán.  The Cathedral of the Holy Spirit was built in 1532, though all that remains from the colonial period is the façade.  The rest of the original church was destroyed, and a new church was built in its place.  In the picture below, the colonial façade is in the center, with the current cathedral building behind and to the right.

Because Xela is up in the mountains, it has what Wikipedia describes as a "tropical highland" climate.  In other words, it's warm during the day, but really cold at night and in the early mornings.  It's been as low as 36 degrees since I've been here!  Glad I brought some sweaters!