Holy Week Details: Cucurucho Candles Vendor
Purple or violet and black are the colors of Lent and the Holy Week. Cucuruchos, float bearers, wear their cone-head purple robes …
The Last Semana Santa Vistas — Cucurucho Father and Son
Here’s another intimate portrait of a cucurucho father and his son on their way to find their spot for their turn to …
Holy Week Vistas — Photobombing a Grandmother during the Holy Week
Here’s the short story, this grandmother poses on the other side of a procesional carpet, or alfombra in Spanish. A relative is …
Lent Vistas — Cucuruchos having granizadas
After hours of walking and carrying the heavy processional floats, cucuruchos need to hidrate themselves and what better way than with cold …
Lent Vistas — Cucurucho decorations
You know you’re in Antigua Guatemala during the Lent season when you find cucurucho decorations everywhere. Many places also burn copal or …
Holy Week Vistas: Cucurucho Refuelling Station
Here’s your Spanish word of the day: Cucurucho or cone head. Every so often cucuruchos need to refuel so they continue to …
Holy Week Elements: Cucuruchos
Purple or violet is the color of Lent and the Holy Week. Cucuruchos, bearers, wear their cone-head purple robes as a sign …
Perpetuating The Holy Week Traditions in Antigua Guatemala No. 2
As I mentioned yesterday, there will be Lent and Holy Week celebrations in Antigua Guatemala for a long while. These religious traditions …
Lent Sunday Processions: 5th San Bartolomé Becerra
The procession of the fifth Sunday of Lent is quite possibly one of the largest processions in Antigua Guatemala. People just refer …
Lent Sunday Processions: 4th Santa Ana
By the end of the 4th Sunday procession which comes out of the village of Santa Ana, Nelo Mijangos had already walked …
Lent Sunday Processions: 3rd Jocotenango
The third of Sunday of Lent is the turn for the church of Jocotenango to put the best procession possible and believe, …
Cucurucho Handicrafts
The fear of photography is real in Antigua Guatemala. More often I am finding signs which prohibit photography. That’s kind of ironic …
Antigua Holy Week Various Vistas
Sábado de Gloria is a quieter day with only small processions carried by women known as Las Dolorosas (The Grief or Suffering …
Antigua Holy Week Cucuruchos
Cucuruchos with their purple or violet cone-head rebes are another prominent element of Semana Santa in Antigua Guatemala. Purple is worn as …
Cucurucho Tsunami
I confess that you have to click on the image above to understand the title. I confess I have never in my …
Corozo Palms and its Smell are a Staple of the Holy Week
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?
Underneath a Holy Week Float in La Antigua Guatemala
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! 😉
Cucurucho Paying for His Turns at the Float
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.
Processional Musicians Play Sorrowful Tunes
One characteristic which I enjoy about processions is the sorrowful tunes that are played by the mournful marching bands that follow the …