Easter in Guatemala

Story and Photos by Libor Pospisil.

In preparation for my first trip to Guatemala, I thought three days in Flores to see the Mayan pyramids followed by five days in Antigua, possibly the most scenic colonial town in the world. From there, I would travel to Lake Atitlán for one day. While eager to see Guatemala there was something rather ordinary about that itinerary. Every tourist goes to those places, and their photos are everywhere on the web. The only unusual twist in my planning was that I couldn’t find any available hotel or guesthouse in Antigua which concerned me it might be crowded. I bit my tongue and booked the last place on offer—a small backyard cottage in the village of San Juan del Obispo, outside Antigua. I soon discovered why accommodations were tight. My trip dates accidentally coincided with the busy Easter week.

 

Once in Guatemala, my planning anxiety was replaced by joy at my good fortune. Easter in Guatemala is not just a prominent mark on the Catholic calendar; it is an occasion that locals celebrate spectacularly. While some Easter traditions originated in Spain, as with everything in Guatemala, those customs had long been meshed into the country’s Mayan cultural traditions.

Easter on an island: Petén is the vast northern plain of Guatemala, which juts out from the rest of the country on a map. Here, a tropical jungle hides the world-famous sites of the ancient Mayan civilization. Under canopies of tall trees, there are pyramids, palaces, game courts, and other impressive stone structures. Tikal and Yaxha can be reached on day tours from Flores, in the middle of Petén. Planning suggested Flores might be a sleepover place unworthy of note, but once more, I was pleasantly surprised by this colorful town on a small island in Lake Petén Itzá.

On a quiet morning, hoping for respite from the humid heat, I asked a gentleman with a motorboat if I could climb aboard for a tour around the island.  Photographing the island as we motored, I spied a striking white hilltop church that dominated the landscape. The church soon became the starting point for the first surprise Easter procession I viewed in Guatemala.

Drums and palms: Walking to my hospedaje (guesthouse) after dinner in Flores, I suddenly heard trumpets accompanied by the slow beat of drums. I ran to the sound and encountered fifteen men carrying a float on their shoulders, followed by a band. The procession seemed to have started from the white hillside church; clearly, this was not an impromptu event since everyone knew exactly where to walk and turn. On the float stood a life-like wooden statue of Jesus, painted in humanistic colors and dressed in pure white. The float was adorned with branches of palm trees, one of which Jesus held. As an outsider and naive traveler, I suddenly realized it must be Palm Sunday, the beginning of the Easter week (Semana Santa). The men carrying the float wore jeans and plain shirts, giving the event a low-key, humble air. The feeling was of a sacred, reverent small-town procession from a local colonia, not a tourist spectacle. It created an Easter ambiance and feeling that would stay with me for the rest of the trip.

Gem of the Americas:  Continuing my travels, I  made my way to the town of Antigua in the country’s heartland, about two hours from Guatemala City by road. Antigua was founded in 1542, and for a few centuries, it served as the residence of the Spanish colonial administration in Central America. As a result, the city boasts splendid and colorful colonial churches, convents, palaces, and casas (aristocratic houses). Despite being such an architectural gem, the town feels inviting rather than grand and showy. Antigua is also visually stunning because it lies in a valley guarded by gigantic volcanoes—Volcán de Agua being the most prominent. The volcanic landscapes differed from the thick jungles I encountered in Petén.  At Antigua’s elevation of fifteen hundred meters (five thousand feet), the climate, more benign, was hot but not humid.

During my stay, my morning routine involved a bus ride from my village of San Juan del Obispo into the heart of Antigua. There, I walked the cobblestone streets and hiked up to scattered viewing decks to take in the scenery. From these vantage points, I viewed Antigua’s old town surrounded by volcanoes spread out below me. Two favorite views were Cerro de la Cruz, a small hilltop outside the center, and the roof on Iglesia de la Merced, a yellow church with a highly refined façade. Another highly photogenic location in Antigua was Arco de Santa Catalina, an arch spanning an old street leading toward Volcán de Agua. I discovered that by viewing it early in the morning, I could avoid the smartphone photographers in the Easter crowds.

Along with the colorful streets and the famous Arco de Santa Catalina, Antigua has one more unique sight I discovered while walking from Parque Central past Catedral de San José. The white front of the current cathedral is built in the colonial style, but hidden behind it are the ruins of the original, much larger cathedral. I walked among the bare walls and cracked columns that supported only the outline of its once-vaulted roof. The old cathedral was now reduced to its essence, and it felt magical, like exploring an ancient Mayan temple. The cathedral’s destruction was, not surprisingly, a series of earthquakes that are still so common in this volcanic valley.

The busiest week of the year: Within the remains of the old cathedral, I came across a crew repainting a long wooden platform. In my rudimentary Spanish, I approached one man and asked about it. “That’s the float for the Friday procession, so we have to finish in two days,” he said and returned to painting the wood around number 55. I then realized the number was a marker for a position assigned to a specific float-bearer. Unlike the event I’d witnessed previously in Flores, this float’s huge size required careful planning for the logistics of the procession.

While roaming the streets toward evening, I noticed locals dressed in purple cloaks. Later, when darkness fell, I saw the first event of Antigua’s Easter. Large crowds had converged behind railings in Parque Central.  A procession was forming, so I joined the waiting crowd. We watched scores of men in purple cloaks, moving in sync, carrying a long float with a stunning piece of art—Jesus in green, holding a gold cross, surrounded by gilded sculptures. All was lit to an almost blinding extent, and mystically, the gold of the statuary shone dimly through a cloud of incense. Though there were many bearers, it was hard to imagine how they could carry such a heavy load. To set the pace, a vast band of musicians, formally dressed, even wearing bow ties, followed the float. Later, I discovered this event was the Wednesday procession of Jesús Nazareno del Milagro, which the church of Santuario San Felipe de Jesús organized. Almost every day of Easter week, Antigua churches host different processions, each moving along a predetermined route through the grid of streets in the old town. Each procession is organized by a church brotherhood (fraternidad) or sisterhood (hermandad). Most incredibly, a procession may last up to twelve hours! The planning of the routes must be meticulous to ensure that individual bearers know their spot and that any two different processions do not collide.

Good Friday artists: Easter processions have a long tradition in Spanish-speaking countries, and Spain is also famous for them. When I arrived in Antigua on Friday morning from my hospedaje, I encountered another Spanish-born tradition, which has evolved into its most colorful form in Guatemala. On the cobblestones of a street at the edge of the old town, people were creating works of art known as alfombras or carpets. They indeed resembled runner carpets in their shape and design. I stopped at one of them to observe. The young artist held a large, thick cardboard template with carved designs in various geometric and floral shapes. He carefully placed cardboard above the cobblestones and sprinkled purple sawdust. Then, he took another cardboard and did the same with yellow sawdust. His carpet came to life, elegantly arranged in symmetrical patterns.

The artist had many buckets of sawdust, each in a unique, vivid color. Being curious, I approached and asked his name. José told me he had come from a nearby village and worked in a local art studio. Pointing to his phone’s screen, he showed me the social media page of his workplace, the Alfombras López studio. José was kind enough to give me two little sacks of colored sawdust as souvenirs.

As I walked through what was now the magical center of Antigua, I could no longer recognize it. Cars, buses, and moto-taxis were gone. All the streets were for the alfombras and artists. There were too many to count, but I thought there must be at least a hundred on display. Crowds surrounded those close to Arco de Santa Catalina. The themes in the alfombras ranged broader and wider as I kept walking. One contained such intricate patterns that I wondered if the façade of Iglesia de la Merced was the inspiration. Next came an artist lying on a plank above the street level, creating a large portrait of a red bird. Another alfombra displayed a purple Virgin Mary in its center.  Some alfombras were created using petals and green branches. The cobblestones of Antigua morphed into an open-air gallery. The very sight of the spectacular artistry made my whole fortuitous Easter trip worth the visit.

The longest of the processions: My walk among the alfombras took me to Parque Central. There, a crowd gathered for an afternoon procession. I arrived just as it was leaving the cathedral. Immediately, I recognized the float I had seen the workers preparing among the old cathedral ruins.

Soon, another float made its way. It carried a statue of the Virgin Mary, which was carried only by females, all dressed in black with black veils. The afternoon heat must have made that procession an intense physical experience. A woman at the front of the float carried an embroidered banner that read “Hermandad Sepultado Catedral,” referring to the cathedral sisterhood honoring the entombment of Jesus.

Continuing my walk, in one of the side streets, I noticed other floats, which were arranged in a long train and were prepared for processions later in the day. Each of them represented one of the fourteen stations of the cross, each depicted using lively and colorfully painted sculptures. There was so much buzz around them that I asked one man leaning on a float what kind of a procession it would be. He pointed to the emblem on his cloak, with the letters “EC” in it. “We are from Escuela de Cristo.” I had heard from locals that this particular procession would be the most spectacular. And indeed—that night, in the streets, I met the train of floats on wheels, slowly moving through the streets of Antigua, pulled by the men in “EC” cloaks. The length of the procession was overwhelming. Lights on the platforms emphasized the colors of the statues, and the awe effect was complete. In the climax of Easter week, the Escuela de Cristo procession walked over the alfombras on the streets. Behind them, they left colorful sawdust scattered among the cobblestones. The art gallery was gone. It lasted only that one special day.

Singing by the lake: Thinking I had experienced the end of Easter’s festivities in Guatemala, I surprisingly experienced yet another event to stir my emotions; this one at Lake Atitlán. The lake, located about three hours from Antigua, was my last day trip. Here, at the shore of the lake, I jumped on a boat that ferried me to the San Juan La Laguna village. There, as in other villages around the lake, Mayan communities still preserve their ancestral culture, including weaving and indigenous languages, which are spoken along with Spanish.

I hiked outside San Juan La Laguna and reached a hilltop, which overlooked the perfectly blue lake with volcanoes surrounding it. Then, when I walked down a street in the village, I heard singing getting closer and closer. Soon, a procession was moving toward me. At the front were teenagers in their red-and-white church robes. They were followed by floats with statues of Jesus and Mary, which were swaying above a crowd of older men and women. The men were dressed in black suits, white shirts, and hats. The women, however, stood out with skirts and scarves made from traditional Mayan textiles woven with brightly colored stripes and geometric patterns.

The procession did not captivate me only through its colors; the sound also glued me to the spot and locked my attention. They had no band, only one accordion to set the melody. The rest was music made by the members of the procession, who sang along to a beautiful melody in Spanish: “La luz de Dios, en Él brilló, la nueva vida nos llevó. Alegría y paz, hermanos, que el Señor resucitó.” (“The light of God shone in Him, he brought us new life. Joy and peace, brothers, for the Lord has risen.”). Sung in a folk style, the performance felt both upbeat and heartfelt. Because I saw no other spectators watching, it felt like a purely local event. This procession exuded so much beauty with its sincerity and plainness that it overpowered me more than any other I had observed in the country. Once the procession passed, it was time for me to return to Antigua. The week was ending, and soon I would leave Guatemala.

I started my trip thinking my itinerary would be very ordinary, but with all the distinctly wonderful culture I encountered in this beautiful country that single week, combined with the archeological sites, volcanoes, lakes, and colonial architecture, I would never again dare to think that spending Easter week in Guatemala would be an ordinary journey.

IF YOU GO: 

Petén

• Low-key guesthouse in Flores: Hospedaje Doña Gladys https://www.booking.com/hotel/gt/hospedaje-dona-gladys-flores-https-www-booking-com-pulse-j1l5ut.es.html
• Tour companies for Mayan archeological sites: Tikal Adventures https://tikaladventures.com/?lang=en and Guat2Do Travel Experiences https://guat2do.com/

Antigua

• Private shuttle from Guatemala City to Antigua: https://authenticguatemala.com/en/
• Cabin in San Juan del Obispo: Casa Jardin De Julia https://casajardindejulia.com/
• Cathedral of San José: https://laantiguaguatemala.com/en/monumentos/san-jose-cathedral/
• Iglesia la Merced: https://www.vidaantigua.com/attractions/iglesia-la-merced/
• Cerro de la Cruz: https://www.vidaantigua.com/attractions/cerro-de-la-cruz/
• List of Easter processions: https://www.guatemala.com/noticias/cultura/procesiones-de-semana-santa-en-antigua-guatemala-2024.html
• Tour company for the day trip to Lake Atitlán: https://www.grayline.com/tours/panajachel-and-lake-atitlan-tour-with-boat-to-santiago-full-day-from-antigua/