Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Guatemala Tour

From Ash Wednesday until Easter Sunday, when the fragrance of corozo, incense, and sawdust hangs in the air, when the streets are bedecked with purple, and the sounds of the sacred music accompanying processions ring through the town, there is no mistaking the period of Lent. The celebration of Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Guatemala is extraordinary not only for the solemnity of the processions, but also for the elaborate decoration of the altars and the shrines. Artisans fashion stencils to make elaborate sawdust patterns, while others bring from the fields clover and corozo, the Flower of Sorrows (or Collar of the Queen). Altar attendants painstakingly paint curtains and backdrops that help to give more realism to the scenes of the passion of Christ.

Table of Contents Customs Processional Floats Confraternities Traditional Foods Schedule Tour

From Ash Wednesday until Easter Sunday, when the fragrance of corozo, incense, and sawdust hangs in the air, when the streets are bedecked with purple, and the sounds of the sacred music accompanying processions ring through the town, there is no mistaking the period of Lent. The celebration of Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Guatemala is extraordinary not only for the solemnity of the processions, but also for the elaborate decoration of the altars and the shrines. Artisans fashion stencils to make elaborate sawdust patterns, while others bring from the fields clover and corozo, the Flower of Sorrows (or Collar of the Queen). Altar attendants painstakingly paint curtains and backdrops that help to give more realism to the scenes of the passion of Christ.

The first Guatemalan holy week processions date from the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century; their advent was tied to the new liturgy established by the Council of Trent (1560 to 1565). Semana Santa arrived in Quetzaltenango with the Spaniards. Soon more than seventy religious societies or "confraternities" were established, celebrating a Semana Santa whose exact form has not survived in our days and about which we have no written records.

It was at the beginning of the 20th century that Semana Santa in Quetzaltenango began to reach its current height and splendor; by the middle of the century it was considered the most important celebration of its kind in Guatemala. The reason for the national and international prestige of Semana Santa in Quetzaltenango has much to do with the foundation, in 1922, of the Brotherhood of Our Lord of the Sepulchre of the Church of San Nicolas, a society which stressed the virtues of order, discipline, meditation, and silence. The Brotherhood recognized the importance and value of having highly visible public worship, and the need that people have during times of suffering, repentance, or longing, to hold tight to those images which bring them closer to a consciousness of God.

The Quetzalteco holy week traditions, largely the creation of this Brotherhood (the church itself was constructed in 1890), were totally different from those of Antigua or the New Guatemala of the Ascension (Guatemala City), so that a large number of tourists from all parts of the world have come to witness a unique combination of the religious traditions of both Christianity and the Maya-Quiche religion.

 

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Document updated in May, 2006