Semana Santa (photo: Leonel Mijangos/enantigua.com)

Colorful carpets, thumping bands, pungent odors, rich tastes, thick crowds—through the Lenten season, into Palm Sunday and Semana Santa, Holy Week, all five senses are overwhelmed in every Guatemalan city and village, but nowhere more than in La Antigua Guatemala with its colonial traditions and frequent processions.

Intricate floral designs, forming colorful alfombras, carpets, are most elaborate on Good Friday but delight the eye before every procession throughout this season. Purple robes, and sometimes white, red, black vestments, line the streets and drape penitents carrying saints through the streets, with banners of color on the homes of the faithful. In the markets, great bundles of multihued flowers, of green pine, yellow palm, brown bark, sawdust dyed in many shades, are stacked for sale for the carpets. All these are treats for the sense of sight.

Soft shuffling of hundreds of feet along procession routes. Loud and mournful bands following the statues of the saints. Even louder and incongruous rock from speakers entertaining the carpet-makers through the night, and loud mortars and strings of firecrackers. Horse hooves on the cobblestones as the actors playing Roman soldiers ride to announce the Crucifixion with shouts. Sobs and laughter, moans and cheers, murmurs of prayers from penitents in the processions and cries of laughter from children in the parks. And, of course, the joyful music of marimba, in restaurants and homes. All these are treats to be heard.

Pom, incense of burning pitch, forms thick clouds of smoke to cleanse the procession routes. A sweeter odor comes from the machines spinning cotton candy in the park, the sugary smell blended with charcoal grills with sizzling steaks and sausages. More subtle are smells of the blossoms, of the dust, of the crowds standing or shuffling in the sunshine, of the pine needles trampled underfoot. These and more are treats to be smelled.

The special tastes of traditional foods of the season, salads of beets, of smoked tuna, green olives, pickled eggs, candied fruits. The taste in the mouth of the incense smoke as the processions pass, or of the sweets sold by vendors following those processions. Strong coffee for carpet-builders, and draft beer for the spectators. Tamales and tacos and grilled carnes and fried bananas. There are so many holiday treats to be tasted.

Then there’s touch. Sore shoulders and feet for those carrying the heavy anda platforms with the carved saints. Sore backs for fathers carrying little ones on their shoulders to see it all. Sometimes unpleasant touch of people pressing so close together along the procession routes. Sometimes loving touch as couples and families hold hands as they walk among the marvelous carpets before those exquisite creations are destroyed by the marchers in the processions. Each special touch, each sensuous sight, sound, smell, taste, form unforgettable memories of the season, of Semana Santa in Guatemala.

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Procesión Catedral, Quetzaltenango 2008 (photo: Harry Díaz/www.flickr.com/harrydiaz)

(photo: Harry Díaz/www.flickr.com/harrydiaz)

Lasting from one to 12 hours, processions wind through the streets while musicians walk behind the andas playing mournful dirges as the smell and smoke of incense swirls through the air.

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Offerings of fruit adorn the gateways through which the processions pass. (photo: Victoria Stone)

written by Ana Flinder

Semana Santa is undoubtedly the most festive week of the year in Guatemala, celebrated with the most pomp and grandeur in La Antigua, and with deeply traditional ceremonies and indigenous style in Santiago Atitlán. Both of these destinations require advanced bookings for lodging but are not the only places to experience a Guatemalan Semana Santa.

San Pedro la Laguna, at the base of Volcán San Pedro, has a surprisingly authentic and reverent Semana Santa celebration, as well as a plethora of hotels. In recent years, San Pedro has attracted only a smattering of tourists who attend the celebrations, while many, both Guatemalan and foreign, stay downhill from town in the tourist zone, vacationing among the many bars and restaurants, and perhaps kayaking and horseback riding.

There are processions all through the week in San Pedro, featuring a children’s procession and a Judas procession on Ash Wednesday, processions of Christ on the cross and María on Good Friday, the women’s daytime processions with María on Saturday, and a procession of the resurrected Christ on Easter morning.

Although San Pedro is a relatively modernized town—for example, almost none of the women still wear handwoven huipiles, prefering polyester “blusas”—the Semana Santa celebrations are bien tradicional. It is immediately evident that days and weeks of work have gone into the elaborate preparations of the processions and alfombras. Here, the alfombras—carpets laid out on the streets for the processions to walk over as they carry statues of Jesus and Mary— are nearly all made of organic materials: flowers, leaves, seedpods and seeds, which have been gathered from the woods and volcano slopes surrounding the town in the previous days. And over their finest sequin-spangled lacy blusas, the Catholic women of San Pedro wear traditional handwoven muticolored checkerboard shawls. These backstrap loom-woven trajes of San Pedro are still used for daily wear as well as for ceremonies. Traditions which seemed to have been lost are revived and alive in San Pedro in this week of the year.

While not as mind-boggling or dramatic as the processions in La Antigua or Santiago, Semana Santa in San Pedro is a feast for the eyes, as well as an authentically reverent celebration that carries its own unique sweetness and devotion. And, naturally, there are plenty of firecrackers.

Semana Santa Processions San Pedro la Laguna, Lake Atitlán
(main streets, time schedule is approximate)

April 5 – Palm Sunday
5:30am—A blessing, distribution of palms & procession; 6am, Mass

April 9 – Holy Thursday
8am—Procession, Via Crucis; evening brings preparation of alfombras for Good Friday

1pm—Procession, the Holy Cross of Jesus of Nazareth
1:30pm—Veneration of the Holy Cross until 1pm on Holy Friday
8pm—Procession, Jesus of Nazareth and La Virgen Dolorosa.

April 10 – Holy Friday 
8am—Procession, Via Crucis, with the
statues of Jesus of Nazareth and La Virgen Dolorosa
Noon—Procession, the Holy Cross
8pm—Procession del Santo Entierro
con el Señor Sepultado.

April 11 – Holy Saturday 
6pm—Solemn procession of la Virgen de Soledad carried by the mothers of the community, along the main streets of San Pedro

April 12 – Easter Sunday
8am—Procession, the Risen Christ, el Señor Resucitado

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The men’s traje of Santiago features rows and rows of hand-embroidered birds. (photo: Victoria Stone)

written by Ana Flinder

Those of you who have your place to stay in La Antigua Guatemala for Semana Santa are sure to enjoy what is known as the second-biggest and most spectacular Semana Santa celebration in the world. (Second only to Sevilla, Spain, so they say.) And you know who you are. Because they also say that if you didn’t book a hotel in La Antigua a few months in advance, there will be no rooms available — or you’d better find one now.

But for those of you who are considering other destinations for witnessing some of the best and most authentic of Guatemalan culture, consider a trip to Lake Atitlán. Oddly, Panajachel, one of the largest and most tourism-oriented towns on the lake, only had a tiny community procession when last we checked. Rather, it is one of the favorite vacation spots of Guatemalan families, as well as of young people from Guatemala City who want to party the week away.

Santiago Atitlán, across the lake, has a truly spectacular and authentic Semana Santa celebration, which is at times a breathtaking show of faith and sacrifice. Here you will see cultural traditions that have their roots in pre-conquest times and which have been evolving, blended with Catholicism, for centuries, while remaining deeply indigenous. 

Here in Santiago, one of the lake towns that has most thoroughly preserved its indigenous traditions, both Holy Wednesday and Good Friday offer spectacular processions. On Wednesday, Maximón’s procession goes from his house to his chapel in the churchyard. On Good Friday the venerated statue of Christ is taken down from his cross, put in a flower-decked coffin and, around mid-day, leaves the church, first to meet up with Maximón, then to begin the long procession all through the night. Easter Sunday is celebrated with a Mass in the church.

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