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The Economics of the Holy Week
As Semana Santa, the Holy Week before Easter, approaches, the historic colonial town of Antigua sees almost daily processions. These processions include …
As Semana Santa, the Holy Week before Easter, approaches, the historic colonial town of Antigua sees almost daily processions. These processions include …
The unmistakable thumping that accompanies the processions comes from percussionists beating huge drums with this hummer-like sticks. Do you know the name …
I can bring to you the colors, the imagery, the sounds and even video clips, but I can’t transmit or transfer you …
The Cuaresma and Semana Santa season comes with its own set of garments; from the Romans to the Cucuruchos to the Dolorosas …
I noticed that Prensa Libre, one of Guatemala’s largest and oldest newspapers, was also sponsoring a processional band this past weekend. I …
I don’t know if sponsoring the processions for Cuaresma and Semana Santa (Lent and Holy Week respectively) was already common practice in …
The Santa Clara ruins is among the most popular wedding destination venues. And even if folks don’t decide to celebrate inside Santa …
This Sunday afternoon at Calle del Arco was just as guest contributor Arturo Godoy said in The mime just wants to get …
As almost every first of the month, AntiguaDailyPhoto is joining the City Daily Photo community in the orchestrated global effort to show …
I can remember everything about this Antigua moment except exactly where it is. All the recent discussion about water reminded me of …
The City of La Antigua Guatemala is, for me, completely coloured by my experience of life as an artist. Often out of all the photographs I take, the ones that end up “speaking” back to me with the most intensity are those expressed abstractly
Interestingly enough, Erick was commenting yesterday how impressive was to see the massive float make a U-turn as he was watching the …
The Holy Week in Guatemala is a full five senses overwhelming experience. As you follow the processions all five senses are bombarded …
You normally see men carrying the big heavy processional floats or andas as they are known in Guatemalan Spanish. You can browse …
I don’t know how it happened, but I had lost this vista of the Jacaranda trees in bloom at La Antigua Guatemala’s …
I really like the Lent decorations you find over doorways and windows in La Antigua Guatemala. Lent or Cuaresma in Spanish is …
Boy, didn’t I tell you that the best time of the year to visit Antigua Guatemala, top city travel destination, is during …
Almost a year ago I said that La Antigua Guatemala is the Wedding Capital of Guatemala. The term Wedding Destination Capital describes …
Those of you, who have followed the daily updates of La Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo for a while, would know already how …
Support My Efforts, Use Art Photos For Your Wall Decor! You can now purchase high-quality prints (digitally signed) of any photo available …
Do you really want a long name, here’s one: “Parroquia San Pedro Apostol, San Juan Bautista of San Pedro Las Huertas, La …
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!
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.
Gringos are now an integral part of La Antigua Guatemala and therefore many of them participate of the preparations of the world …
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?
Each turn of the Holy Week Float 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.
Well, like always, not everything is bad about the Holy Week in La Antigua Guatemala. If you can obviate the crowds, the …
All the weekends of Lent (Cuaresma) and during the Holy Week La Municipalidad de La Antigua Guatemala (Municipality or City Hall) imposes …
Well, between precessions, a jazz festival and a Central American meeting for Harley-Davidson motorcycle riders, La Antigua has been anything but a …
New Year’s Eve Celebrations in La Antigua Guatemala:
For starters there are many things that make New Year’s Eve similar and different than Christmas’ Eve. If Christmas’ Eve is celebrated with the family at home at your parents’ home; New Year’s Eve can be celebrated anywhere: a discotheque, a park, the beach or La Calle del Arco, a popular venue in La Antigua Guatemala
La Antigua Guatemala is the most often used backdrop in Guatemala for… you name it. Anything from films, concerts, paintings, photos, festivals, religious rituals, and why not, weddings too. Actually, La Antigua Guatemala is used often as the backdrop for weddings not only of Guatemalans, but for many foreigners as well.
As beautiful, cosmopolitan, antique and modern as it is La Antigua Guatemala, many people choose to live in one of the surrounding villages that belong to the municipio (county) of La Antigua Guatemala. There are many reasons for this decision which range from the economics, ‘real guatemalan experience’, or simply to live in a more natural and greener environment.
Santiago was a very popular name for the conquistadors to use as they rechristen the new lands of the American continent. If you check the entry for Santiago in Wikipedia, you will there are over 60 cities and towns throught the world that carry that name and that is a very short list since you could probably find about 60 towns with the Santiago name, just in Guatemala. But why was Santiago such a popular name for the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors?
The Latin American lottery is played with cardboards of nine images, each cardboard is different, bean or maize counts, and a person calling out aloud the name of the images: La Chalupa, El Borracho, El Catrín, La Campana, El Cantaro, et-cetera. Whoever gets all nine images called out and accounted for with beans or maize seeds wins the lottery, if, and only if they scream with all their lungs LO-TE-RIIIIAAAAA.
Almost all town fairs and festivities are around the town’s patron, in this case is San Pedro Las Huertas, which by the way, means Saint Peter of the vegetable gardens. Since Guatemala was a catholic country for the last 500 years or so and the Mesoamerican indigenous people absorbed and mixed the catholic rituals and traditions with their own religious beliefs and traditions, most Guatemalan towns have a Spanish catholic first name and often an indigenous last name (otherwise known as the original name). For example, Santo Domingo Xenacoj, which means the original name of the town was Xenacoj, and the town was re-christen with Santo Domingo. Now with the above information, we now know that a town’s fair happens once-a-year on the town’s catholic patron. For San Pedro Las Huertas the date is June 29th and for La Antigua Guatemala is July 25th because the city used to be called The Very Noble and Very Loyal City of Saint James of the Lords of Guatemala, as mentioned by Manolo a few days ago. And some of you thought La Antigua Guatemala was already a very long name; try explaining to your friends and relatives that you are planning a vacation to The Very Noble and Very Loyal City of Saint James of the Lords of Guatemala.
Oops! I almost forgot about the photo above. These ruins belong to the church Our Lady of the Remedies, or Nuestra Señora de los Remedios in Spanish. It is located on the left bank of El Pensativo river, on the south part of town, right on the street that takes you to El Calvario Church; just a few hundred feet from it. The processional figures in storage, shown yesterday, are pile on the front part of the atrium. There is a black bird in the picture, can you find it?
Above you can see the processional figures taking some time off from work in Nuestra Señora de los Remedios Church Ruins, near El Calvario in La Antigua Guatemala.
Churches serve as terminals from which processions depart or arrive. Churches also serve as home-base for all the brotherhoods of cucuruchos and sisterhoods. Churches also put their best face for the Holy Week and many get a paint job and/or restoration works in the weeks prior to Semana Santa.
With this photo we wave goodbye to Semana Santa and to Holy Week’s processions. I was told the last procession, the Resurrection (Resurección) procession comes out on Easter Sunday (today) a 6 a.m. and its back in the church by 10 in the morning.
La Dolorosa or The Sorrowful Mother is the biblical figure of 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.
Nevertheless, Good Friday is the culmination of the Holy Week Celebrations and the processions end at the Calvario Church (Calvario is the Spanish word for Calvary or Golgotha). The entrance of the Calvario Church in La Antigua Guatemala is a yellow façade with three arches, topped by three bells and three crosses —one larger than the other two— with a very large concrete cross in front. Can you see the obvious architectonic reference to Jesus’ crucifixion?
Thanks to Byron Ortiz for lending his photos of Semana Santa (Holy Week), so we can get a better picture of the …
Cucuruchos with their purple or violet cone-head dress are another prominent element of Semana Santa in Antigua Guatemala. Last week, Santiago Durham asked what its the significance of the color purple or violet in the dress and banners during Semana Santa, well it took a lot of digging to find out (I turned around and asked my office coworker), but I can now tell you the purple is worn as a sign of penitence. As a matter of fact, processions are a sign of penitence as well, heck the whole Semana Santa is a penitent act.
The making of carpets from sawdust, pine-needles, flowers, vegetables is a community-forming tradition. People get together by block or near-by neighbors to create the carpets on which the processions will pass by. Sometimes the making of the carpets is done at night, all night so they are ready for next day’s procession.
Purple cone-head “Cucuruchos” are a big attraction around Antigua Guatemala in the Lent Season. Although Cucurucho’ dresses come in many colors, bright …
The sign above is at entrance doorway of the Colegio Mayor de Santo Tomás de Aquino, School of Saint Thomas, and you …
In the Catholic realm the Holy Week Celebrations begin today with the Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Cuaresma, the Spanish …
El Calvario Church, located to the south of La Antigua Guatemala, is another famous landmark, yet it only took me 290 entries …
Catholics in the American Continent celebrate many of the same religious events and traditions on the same days, more or less, but …
Church and stars, originally uploaded by rudygiron. There are about 12 churches, colonial nonetheless, in Antigua and today it occurred to me …