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Often, around La Antigua Guatemala, you see long lines of tourist in uniforms; sometimes is just a t-shirt, sometimes is the everything. You wonder what organization they belong to or what are they here for. In this case, I wish I had asked their reasons to wear the same t-shirt. Darn!

We continue our tour of the remains of the Holy Week by showing how flores de papel (paper flowers) are use to embellish windows and doorways around La Antigua Guatemala. Above, can see the entrance to the handicrafts and jewelry store El Quinto Sol.

Well, it seems like the color purple will be with us for a while longer. The flowers above are known colloquially as Flores de papel (paper flowers) because their petals are so dried that they look like if they were made from paper. I looked up the flower in the Guateflora book, but I did not find it there, so I can not help you with scientific name. Perhaps, some of the other visitors know its scientific name and can share it with us, anyone?

Many purple and violet banners are still hanging from doorways and windows around town. It feels like many don’t want to let go of Semana Santa.

What do you think?

Accomplishment Side Note:
Believe it or not, the Macmillan Group will be using one of my photos as a cover for their Music Text Book for 9th graders in Mexico. Okay, can you tell me on what date was the photo appearing on the cover of the book published here? If your answer is correct, you will get 10,000 LACA points!

Like always, if you click the thumbnail below you get to see an enlargement.

I caught a shot of marching students and the municipal band in a campaign of awareness and against tuberculosis. I even got a flyer describing the 4 steps to prevent the propagation of tuberculosis in Guatemala.

If you click in the thumbnail below you will be able to see the flyer.

This is the kind of smile you see often on people’s faces who visit La Antigua Guatemala. The weather gods do help, I guess.

Does one have the right to change his/her mind? I ask because the first time I posted the use of wood as fuel, I was against it. By the second time I showed a photo of wood being used as fuel, I had learnt that not all instances of the use of wood as fuel were bad from an article that appeared in National Geographic en español. Recently, I learned about the benefits of finding renewable sources of fuel, like biodiesel (Can you see an entry on Biodiesel coming up pretty soon?). So, I can change my mind, right?

Well, we are not going to talk about wood as fuel anyway. No sir, no. We actually are going to talk about the colonial measurements which are still in use the 21st Century Guatemala. How you may ask yourself we moved from renewable fuel sources to colonial measurements in the same photo of a truck full of wood logs? Easy, my friends, that’s how easy it can be done. Let me explain. See, the photo above is about fuel home delivery and the transaction that occurred there. The amount of wood missing from the truck, which was delivered to the lady in delantal (apron) is a colonial measurement known as una tarea (one workload). Workload or tarea (also known as homework) is the best word I can think of to translate the word tarea. The lady in the apron bought una tarea of wood logs, which, she said, was enough fuel for two weeks for her household. She paid Q180/US$24 for una tarea of wood logs.

Other colonial measurements still in use in present-day Guatemala are: Una mano (one hand or five of anything), un manojo (a bunch), una libra (a pound; this one may hurt many of you, but for sure, the civilized world now uses the kilo), una picopada (a truckload), una fila de frances (a row of french rolls), una arroba (@ or 25 pounds) un quintal (100 pounds), una cuerda (a cord equals 1/6 of city block), una medida (a measurement of whatever fits inside a small can or basket), una penca de banano (that’s a banana cluster), et-cetera or basically that’s what I can remember right now. I am sure the Guatemalans visitors will share other colonial measurements being used in Guatemala. There was a recent article about colonial measurement in Prensa Libre’s Revista Domingo under the title of Costumbres que pesan {ñ}.

Semana Santa in Guatemala City Side Note: For those of you who did not have enough Holy Week photos, here is a link to Slide Show of Holy Week photos in Guatemala City by the Guatemalan photojournalist James Rodrí­guez of MiMundo.Org. If you have the time, I recommend his photo stream at Flickr and his website very highly.

One final post scriptum: Today’s entry can be also called the Boeing 707. Do you know why?

A simple shot to commemorate the sunshine, the purple, the ever-present spring and to revive the Guateflora series. This photo was taken at my favorite green house: Vivero La Escalonia.

I wish everyone an easy starting week!

P.S. I forgot to mention that we went over 700 entries six days ago; Today’s photo is the 706 consecutive page posted at La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo. No wonder I’m so tired.

The Spring Season began a few days ago, so I’ve read somewhere {ñ}. Guatemala’s slogan is the Land of the Eternal Spring, yet in this country Spring has never showed up. As a matter of fact, Guatemala’s weather does not follow the ‘normal’ seasons. Instead, Guatemala has a dry and a wet seasons. The wet season begins in May and ends towards the last days of October; the remaining months are the dry season. So in about 40 days the rainy season will begin in Guatemala and the whole country will be wearing an intense verdurous foliage dress. If you ever decide to visit Guatemala, make sure you bring dark sunglasses because the adjective intense accompanies every shade of the color hue.

This old man and the band are the tail of the procession. There goes Semana Santa 2008… we are at end of the Holy Week in La Antigua Guatemala. Just one more day!

To answer Sara’s question about where the money collected through the sale of the turns at carrying the float go? Almost one third goes to the band. I heard that the San Felipe Church processional Band charges Q150,000 (close to US$20,000) per procession and La Merced Church processional band about Q125,000. I imagine some of the money goes to the church who lends the saint figures for the processions. Some money goes to the organization, the creation of the scenes above the floats which are never the same and lastly for maintenance.

If you would like to see a video clip of a processional band playing, check out last year entry Weekend Procession in the Lent Season. Processional musician play sorrowful tunes is another entry where you can also see a processional band.

Literary Introspection Side Note: Much of what I am today and the decisions I made that took me to La Antigua Guatemala were inspired or influenced in part by Milan Kundera’s writings. Through the reading of several of Milan Kundera‘s novels, especially Life is Elsewhere, Laughable Loves, The Farewell Party, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Immortality and Identity, I begun to question myself about life, lifestyles and what I wanted out of the day. Life is a jigsaw puzzle made up from moments (days) and where and with whom you spend those moments shapes the picture you see at the end. Honestly, I do not know if it is better to live in the ‘first world’ with a first-world salary, first-world commodities and such or to live here in the south or third world with all the complications and dangers that decision entails. I don’t know about the first/third world euphemisms either. However, I do know that a different life or lifestyle is possible outside the safety net. There are other ways to be human and to experience unusual traditions and celebrations. There is a huge difference between Spring Break, Easter, Holy Week and Semana Santa as we live it in La Antigua Guatemala for sure. To each its own. For the moment, I’m just happy to be able to take ordinary snapshots from my daily comings-and-goings and to be able to share them with YOU! I hope you enjoy them too!?

The side note is dedicated to my dear epistolary friend Carmen.

That is right, Semana Santa in Guatemala is an equal opportunity celebration. Sure, cucuruchos take the majority of the clicks of cameras and most of the video recorded, but children, women and dogs have a place in the Holy Week celebrations. Women’s float or andas are a bit smaller and carry virgins or angels most of the time.

Right about now, you may be asking yourself, what are processions anyway and what do they represent? Well processions are representations of the the last days of Jesus Christ. Processions represent the funeral march of Jesus Christ. Processions in Guatemala also represent a penitent act.

Here is the background information about La Dolorosa Procession, taken from last year entry:

La Dolorosa or The Sorrowful Mother is the biblical figure of the sorrowful mother Mary which follows Jesus in his way to his crucifixion. This act is represented by a smaller anda (long carved wooden flatbed image-carrying float [*]) —carrying the effigy of sorrowful Mother Mary and other female biblical representations— which is hauled exclusively by women who mostly dress in black or white as this is the appropriate dress code for a funeral. Jesus’ funeral.

Gringos are now an integral part of La Antigua Guatemala and therefore many of them participate of the preparations of the world famous alfombras de Semana Santa (Holy Week carpets) made from colorful sawdust, flowers, fruits, and anything the imagination allows.

From this shot, I particularly like the framing of the tourist with his backpack before he pulled his camera to shoot the making of the carpet. The background is the San Francisco El Grande Church, home to the remains of Santo Hermano Pedro de Betancourt (Guatemala’s only ‘Oficial’ Saint).

I hope you are enjoying the behind the scenes series of the Semana Santa in La Antigua Guatemala. Remember that you can visit my friends Nelo’s web site EnAntigua.com for an overview of huge processions.

Just like the Christmas Season comes with its own set of smells, flavors and color palette, so does the Holy Week celebrations. I can bring to you still photos, slide shows, video clips and sounds. But I can not bring you the smells. Like I said back in the Virgin of Guadalupe Day, … the incredible power of the sense of smell can detonate nostalgic memories… if only the smells could be seized like Patrick Süskind suggested in his masterpiece Das Parfum (Perfume). How could one go about imprisoning the mixture of the smells of copal incense, corozo palms, fireworks, pine needles, moisten saw dust, fresh tropical fruits, palm flower arrangements and sweat into a digital format readily available to download onto your own computer?

Only in Star Trek that is possible… we must wait for the future to arrive. In the mean time, we wave good bye to Arthur C. Clarke as we thank him for allowing us to dream of the future. Until the future arrives, you must pack your bags and head down south where you can be free!

I did want to say a thing about it; just show the pictures and don’t even mention it; that was my plan. But no, Jerry T gave me away; sort of a behind the scenes of the Holy Week, he said. See the problem with showing pictures of Semana Santa year after year is that you tend to repeat yourself. I do not want to do that, not if I can help it. So if last year I presented the normal approach to the Holy Week in La Antigua Guatemala, this year it has to be different.

Find a new angle always; that is my goal for this site. This was my goal since day 1. What good would it be if I just take the same shots that everybody else is doing. Because of how I earn my living, I get to see thousands of images of La Antigua Guatemala. Furthermore, I follow several photo groups and La Antigua Guatemala is among the most often photographed places in Guatemala. It is virtually impossible not to take the same shot that somebody else already did. And that’s the challenge!

So much mumble jumble to present the underneath view of a Holy Week float in one of the villages of La Antigua Guatemala. Andas (floats) are not only the affair of cucuruchos, women also participate; and sometimes even chuchos (street dogs) get involved in the penitent act of carrying the heavy float!

Purple or violet is the color of Lent and the Holy Week. Cucuruchos wear their cone-head purple dress as a sign of penitence. Not only Cucuruchos have to observe penitence for the Lent (Cuaresma) and the Holy Week (Semana Santa), but they also have to pay if they want to get a chance to carry the enormous floats, known here as andas. According to my good friend Nelo, each turn costs around Q60 (around US$8), there are around 60 turns and each float has somewhere between 80 and 100 spaces for the Cucuruchos. That’s close to Q290,000 (US$38,000) per procession. Boy oh boy, there’s big money to be made with each procession. Now if only they didn’t have to spend the money… but that’s another day’s story!

By the way, you should visit my dear friend Nelo’s web site EnAntigua.com for all the photos of all the processions of Lent and the Holy Week since 2001. Be prepare, there are over a thousand images of Semana Santa and Cueresma at his web site.

You can also browse the Holy Week category for La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo for more background information and photos about the Semana Santa and Cuaresma in La Antigua.