Holy Week is a big deal here—practically the entire city has shut down to celebrate. They don´t have the Easter bunny, but they do have a number of other interesting traditions, ranging from special foods to long processions. Yesterday, we went to the Good Friday procession, a 3-hour spectacle of religious devotion and penitence.
It wasn´t a parade, that´s for sure. For one thing, there was only one float. Very last in the procession came a float bearing the image of Mary, Our Lady of Suffering (La Dolorosa), accompanied by hundreds of women in purple veils throwing rose petals and releasing balloons.
Some people in the procession were dressed normally, carrying images of Jesus or rosaries, mumbling prayers and singing hymns. The majority of the participants, though, were dressed as cucuruchus. Their robes and tall cone-shaped hoods with small eye holes look like Klu Klux Klan outfits, except in brilliant shades of purple and magenta. Most of the cucuruchus just walk along, bare feet on the hot pavement, clutching rosaries or images of Jesus. But some get slightly more extreme—dragging chains from their ankles or carrying ropes and branches to lash their bare backs. A couple people even wrapped barbed wire around their naked torsos, or wore crowns of thorns. Thankfully, they´re not allowed to actually draw blood anymore, but there was plenty of blood painted on faces, chests, and feet.
A large number of people take their penitence one step further. In cucuruchu outfits or Jesus costumes, they haul massive crosses down the road. Young and old men, women, and even a few children stumbled and sweated under the wooden weight, sometimes requiring up to five people just to carry the cross forward. Other people carried the horizontal log from the cross, perched on their bare shoulders, like one of those yokes used to carry water in days long past. When their faces weren´t covered, their expressions told me that this was truly penitence, not just a fun parade.
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Thanks for sharing this account of Good Friday, Em--mucho interesante. The "self-abnegation" you describe (penitence) was, I think, very common in all Catholicism in centuries past. When you get home, we'll try some of it around here.
ReplyDeleteThey should make the easter linebacker instead of the easter bunny. The easter linebacker would walk around asking people what easter was about and if they answered "candy", the easter linebacker would tackle them. Or in your case the could have an easter llama and it would spit in your eyes if you say "candy". That would be sweet if you could be an ox for a day. You could put the yolk on yourself and try your luck at the Oregon Trail. Or you could just be a normal human. I'm not sure that I would want to see that parade. I can't belive people would actually paint themselves with blood. You could turn the parade into a blood drive. I would think that you would have trouble trying to walk with chains or ropes dangling from your ankles/feet!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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