The Floral Rugs of Lent

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My friend Peg and I got up before dawn on Sunday to take a shuttle from Panajachel back to Antigua in order to arrive in time to view the floral rugs before the procession.  Mark and Robert took the opportunity to sleep in, exhausted from the previous days' speed tour of Lake Atitlan, and they met up with us later.  Peg and I had heard much about Lent in Antigua and that it was an experience not to be missed, but we were still in for a big surprise.

We arrived in Antigua around 9 a.m. and dropped off our bags at the Hotel Palacio Chico, where we   had stayed before.   There, the very friendly and helpful young receptionist/assistant manager Daniel, who is bilingual, gave us more information on the procession.  We laced up our walking shoes, grabbed our cameras, and headed for the small, nearby town of Santa Ana.

The streets of Santa Ana were closed to traffic, and people were busy throughout the town working on elaborate  alfombras, or rugs, made of flowers, colored sawdust, and other organic  materials.  It appears each family is responsible for decorating the cobble stone streets in front of their home.  Some alfombras are very elaborate, some are simple.  Some stretch whole city blocks and even  around corners, others are smaller- just six feet or so.  All are part of a tradition which dates back at least one hundred years.

Since we were in Santa Ana early in the morning, we got to see several of the alfombras being constructed.  I asked one man how long it took to create his floral alfombra, and he said ten people had been working twelve hours on it.  That , however is just the construction phase.  After observing their work and the finished product,  clearly several more hours of planning, drawing, ordering flowers and other preparation went into the project.

Later that night, I talked with another of the hotel  employees who gave me more information on the  tradition.  The man I spoke with did not speak English,  so I will lay out the information as best I understood it.  Each Sunday during  Lent, a different church in the  surrounding communities "hosts" the procession.  The first week is Santa Katarina, then Santa Inez, Santa Ana, San Bartolomo, and  finally Merced.  Each week gets bigger and more elaborate, working up to Holy Week,  or Semana Santa. From my observations that day, there must be much community pride tied to the whole event.  Santa Ana is a  small community, but they went all out to create beautiful alfombras; no piece of the streets was undecorated.

After Peg and I had wandered the decorated streets of  Santa Ana, viewing over thirty incredible works of local art, we headed  back to Antigua in a three-wheeled taxi for some breakfast and to recharge my camera battery.  We then took another taxi back to Santa Ana, for the day had not even started yet.

Upon returning to Santa Ana, we were amazed!  Alfombras which we thought were  beautiful before were apparently only just begun.  When we returned, everything was getting the finishing touches.   Beautiful rose arrangements now had baby's breath; images of butterflies created from flowers now had eyes of blue glass marbles.  And, the  quantity of alfombras had multiplied.  The large, elaborate ones were still being worked on, but others had cropped up in our absence, and still others were just getting underway.  By the time the procession started, virtually every piece of roadway was covered with a masterpiece.

After Mass, everything changes.  The event is a mix of funeral, memorial, and  parade.  It is not a parade, as the atmosphere is very somber, but thousands of people come out to participate, process, and  watch.  Hundreds more  people come out to sell everything from hot dogs to purple dolls.  (I thought this aspect of it was very sacrilegious, and I expected Jesus to come out and overturn the tables at any moment.  However, after several hours of viewing the rugs and procession, I was glad to have a hot dog and coke.)

The procession begins after Mass with "Roman Centurions," dressed in red, blowing trumpets.  Following the centurions,  the penitents, dressed in purple, carry the "float" depicting scenes from Jesus' last days.  The "float" (I lack  a better word)  weighs 3.5 ton, as in 7000 pounds, and eighty purple-clad penitents carry it through the streets. There are hundreds of these penitents, for whom it is a great honor to carry the load.  It is so heavy that the penitents unceremoniously, almost surreptitiously, switch out every block or so to give each other a rest.

Following the main "float" is a smaller float depicting a mourning Mary and an angel, carried by women  dressed in  black and white.  I do not know how heavy their load is, but  there do not seem to be nearly as many women to share the load as there are  men for the main float.  There are two more smaller floats; as far as I could tell one was either Joseph or Peter, and the other possibly Mary Magdalene.

  The Romans do not walk on the rugs, but the penitents do.  After several hours of painstaking work, the community's beautiful alfombras are  trampled by the procession of floats and penitents and brass band playing somber dirges.  In a few brief moments, the flowers are mangled, the beauty destroyed, and soon the cleanup crew comes to sweep it all away.The procession circles the town and then heads in to Antigua.  I do not know their path, but as we were back in our hotel room getting ready for bed, I  was telling Mark about my day and he was wondering if he should have gotten out of bed before dawn with me.  Soon, we started to hear the dirges.  Robert, who was following the conversation throughout the day, said, "let's go see the parade!"  It was dark, probably 9 p.m., and the procession was coming down the street on its slow journey back to Santa Ana, twelve hours later.

  Robert and Mark went  out to watch as the procession continued.  The "float" was now illuminated with bright lights powered by a generator, which also had to be carried through town, and there were still throngs of people following along.  The musicians continued to play throughout the twelve-hour day, and they, too would swap out so that no one trumpeter had to play and march all day long.

In the end, Mark and Robert got to see the procession, and I showed them the pictures of the alfombras.  We all had a very full day, and just one more day of wonderful Guatemalan culture.