Its almost Easter, which means that throughout Latin America, Santa Semana is coming up. This is a weeks worth of activities that encompass Palm Sunday and Easter. In San Miguel, where I lived in Mexico, the two biggest days were Good Friday and the following day. On Good Friday, the appropriately costumed townspeople stage a reenactment of Jesus capture, trial, and execution. I believe it ends with the person playing Jesus being tied onto a cross. I never stayed long enough to see the ending. I could guess how it was going to come out anyway, and it was too far for me to walk, even though I didnt have to drag a cross behind me. Playing Jesus is a much desired honor. Its even more of an honor in a suburb of Mexico City, south of San Miguel, where the hands of a volunteer Christ really ARE nailed to a cross. The following day in San Miguel the streets are again lined with people, this time to watch the funeral cortege go by. Its interesting, though a bit creepy, that there is not a sound to be heard from the audience, even though it numbers in the hundreds. Oddly enough, Easter day is not in public such a big deal. People have big family dinners and stay home. I think the reason that the more macabre elements of the pageant get more attention than the bodily ascension of Jesus -- the biggest event in Christianity -- is that Mexicans probably relate more to the mans suffering and death than they do to his transfiguration. They know what it means to suffer. They have been doing it for a long time under the Aztecs, the Spanish, French, and American invaders, and under their own oligarchs, on-the-take politicians, corrupt police and military, and gangsters.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 22:42:25 +0000
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