Reflections: Lenten Processions

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The tradition of religious processions that include images or figures carried on the backs of the faithful and accompanied by props - incense, flowers, music, special banners or flags, etc. - that mark the spiritual and ceremonial nature of the observance is, of course, both ancient and wide-spread. We know, for example, that in Classic Maya times, there were parades that included such elements as drummers and other musicians; costumes and special headdresses; flowers, feathers, and leaves or other natural materials; candles; banners in bright colors; incense and other fragrant substances; along with nobles hoisted on palanquins carried on the backs of their subjects. Most of these ceremonial elements are still incorporated into Mayan ceremonial events.

When the Spanish arrived in Guatemala in 1524, they brought with them their own traditions of religious processions during which penitents demonstrated their sacrificial devotion through the rigorous effort of bearing an image on their shoulders along a sacred route. Documents record that such processions were already occurring in Guatemala by the time the capital moved to Antigua in 1543. These public displays and other religious activities are organized by groups called hermandades, or brotherhoods, who take responsibility for the care and veneration of an image, including the various vigils and processions associated with it. Hundreds of these organizations exist and date to colonial times. It is the members of the hermandad who take the measurements of potential bearers - the cucurruchos, who are distinguished by their purple robes -- and organize them into turnos (bearer groups). They define the processional route, clean and dress the processional images, and supervise the entire process. The hermandad is a hierarchical organization, and faithful participants may rise in the hierarchy to occupy various positions of authority. Some of these positions are marked by the special clothing worn during the procession. The hermandes are complemented by women's sodalities whose members carry the processional images of the Virgin Mary that always accompany the Jesus image. Since some of the andas, or processional floats, weight as much as 7000 pounds and require as many as thirty or forty men on a side - or twenty to thirty women - recruiting enough carriers in an activity that continues throughout Lent. Children also carry smaller images in "juvenile processions" and so begin the life-long process of participation in the holy activities of this solemn time.

A procession includes much more than the floats! Those that occur earlier in Lent are usually shorter, with fewer elements. But all processions include a man playing a traditional drum and flute, incense carriers, banners of the hermandad, men with poles to lift the electrical wires so the image can pass beneath and those carrying poles with the number of the current turno. Following the main processional float there is a funeral march band, and, then, a block later, the image of the Virgin, who may have her own band and incense carriers. Often small figures of Saint John and Mary Magdalene are carried by four older men close behind the Virgin. At the end of the procession there are dozens of vendors offering balloons, cotton candy, sunglasses, lollipops and other traditional sweets, and, these days, pirated CDs and lighted bracelets. Finally - and this IS new since the 1970s! - there is a municipal garbage truck and a team of workers wearing purple Lenten tee shirts who pass by to collect the debris that always accumulates around a procession.

The tradition of processions began to be elaborated in Antigua throughout the 20th century and is today part of the largest Lenten observance in the Western Hemisphere, second only to the observances of Seville, Spain, in the entire world. They are the most visible and best known of the various Lenten activities. Part penitence and part social display, part holiday festival and part personal devotion, the events of Lent in Antigua defy easy classification. Even for the non-religious, they can be enjoyed as fine examples of community-based performance art.