Casa Xelaju - Holy Week in Guatemala (Semana Santa)

Semana Santa (Holy Week)

Customs
The men and women who walk in the processions wear elaborate and distinctive dress: The cucuruchos (literally, the paper-cone heads) wear tunics of black or lilac corduroy – lilac if they are Nazarenes and black if they are Sepulchrites. The ladina women (descendents of Spanish-Indigenous marriages) wear a black garment with a mantilla or madrilena español, (silk or lace scarf) on the head. Over their shoulders they wear a ribbon in lilac or white with a medallion of the Virgin of Sorrows. The indigenous women dress in a short black or lilac garment, a colorful poncho, a perraje (a garment that drapes over the right or left shoulder depending on whether the woman is single or married) and, like the ladinas, a medallion of the Virgin of Sorrows.

Table of Contents

In our time it is possible to say that the images of the Virgin of Sorrows go on smaller floats carried on the shoulders of women who are dressed in outfits of distinctive colors that range from that of cream and lilac to black, cream and lilac for the processions of the Nazarenes and black for the followers of our Lord of the Sepulchre.

In the children’s processions, the boys wear a purple tunic of crepe, and the girls wear an elaborate white dress like the one worn for First Communion, reminiscent of a wedding dress. The participants in the processions, upon arriving during the night, light wax candles that they will carry until the end of the procession, and it is the custom to carry the candles in a little lantern made of thin cardboard and printed with religious motifs.

Document updated in May, 2006


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