Guatemala: Maximón and Other Holy Week Traditions · Global Voices
This post is part of our special coverage Indigenous Rights.
When a very religious culture becomes dominated by yet another deeply religious people, often the religion of the conqueror is imposed on the conquered. However, cultures have always found ways to offer resistance; in Guatemala somehow the Catholic religion has been “hacked” to incorporate indigenous peoples’ gods, goddesses, rites and ceremonies while integrating elements of Catholicism.
<PERSON> is the best example of such transmutation, as explained by the photoblog Mi Mundo:
<PERSON> explains: “In oral tradition, <PERSON> represents <PERSON>, the last ruler of the Maya Kaqchikel people [during the Spanish conquest], who was tied, tortured and murdered. This entire episode is known as <PERSON>, which is surely why they call him <PERSON>: ma refers to a male person in the Maya Kaqchikel language, and ximón means he who is tied up.” According to <PERSON> the syncretism between <PERSON> and <PERSON> began when “the Christian [conquistadores] realized they could not eradicate the image of the great protector of the people. Hence, they began to promote the idea of <PERSON> as being the same as <PERSON>, often related with <PERSON>, a treacherous figure.”
Picture under a Creative Commons attribution license by <PERSON>.
The different and very special elements of religion in Guatemala make the Holy Week (in Spanish, ‘Semana Santa’) quite a unique experience, including characters like the “Cucuruchos“, communities gathering to create holy week carpets made of flowers, and devoted men and women carrying on their shoulders colonial images of <PERSON> and <PERSON> while wearing traditional outfits under the sun, in spite of the hot summer.
Holy Week is a family celebration where everyone is invited to participate, as the photo blog AntiguaDailyPhoto.com describes:
As I’ve mentioned before, 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. 186
The colorful processional carpet elaboration process involves the whole family, close friends, the neighborhood and the entire community. It does not matter if it’s just grandma throwing some corozo (corozo palms) and dried purple flowers to elaborate a humble alfombra in front of her home or it is a team of members of the cuadra (the block), or if a son lends a hand to a dad to put the final touches on the brightly-colored sawdust carpet, the devotion and the do-good spirit are present everywhere you look.
Holy week carpet making. Image by <PERSON> www.Antiguadailyphoto.com (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
<PERSON> [es] explains how Holy Week is celebrated in a very different way in Santiago Atitlán:
En Santiago Atitlán, el Viernes Santo por la tarde, al igual que en el resto católico del país, da inicio la representatividad de la muerte de Jesucristo, pero a diferencia del mundo ladino, la celebración no tiene connotaciones ominosas. Al interior de la iglesia hay un tumulto de gente que participa en la preparación del cortejo procesional, con tambores y chirimillas, no hay pesadumbre; hay respeto al ceremonial, pero no hay tristeza, ni acongojamiento en el rostro y actitud de la gente .
In Santiago Atitlán, during Good Friday afternoon, people celebrate the representation of <PERSON> death, but unlike the non indigenous World, it lacks the ominous character. Inside the church there is a crowd participating in the procession with trombones and “chirimias“, there is no sorrow, only respect for the ceremony, and the faces and attitudes of people attending do not denote suffering or sadness.
Holy Week in Guatemala is rich with colors, scents and devotion. It is a cultural, spiritual and gastronomic experience for locals and visitors in this diverse country with more than twenty four languages and different indigenous groups. The best of different worlds come together to enjoy and find beauty in mixing, rather than imposing, their culture.
This post is part of our special coverage Indigenous Rights. 186