The celebration of Holy Week in Mexico is taken very seriously as every day of the week is honored in a particular way. While Easter Sunday celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it is Good Friday – the day Jesus was crucified on the cross – that takes the spotlight. In Mexico, you can’t celebrate the pleasure without suffering the pain first.
Every gory detail of the day that Jesus was crucified is relived in the form of plays and reenactments. The performances in Morelia had more of a theatrical feel, but spectators followed the thespians from one part of the city to the other for each act despite the blazing heat. From what friends have told me, some of the celebrations in the pueblos take the reenactment of the crucifixion pretty seriously, with Jesus wearing an actual crown of thorns, carrying a heavy wooden cross to the top of a hill, getting “fake” whipped. (Of course, some “accidentally” hit their fellow townspeople a bit harder than they should. Payback, maybe?) The person playing Jesus is selected a year in advance in order to prepare for the celebration. With the women in the crowd weeping and howling in despair, you begin to think it’s the real thing.
The “Procesión del Silencio”, or the Procession of Silence, takes place in Morelia the day before Easter. Numerous crosses bearing severely bloodied Jesuses are removed from churches and carried down the main street, accompanied by hundreds of people representing the executioners wearing pointed hoods, much like those worn by the KKK. A steady pounding of snare drums adds to the eeriness of the event.
And, of course, how could Mary’s pain be overlooked. On the Friday before Palm Sunday, “altares de dolores” are erected to honor “Nuestra Señora de los Dolores”. The Seven Sorrows of Mary are represented by swords penetrating her heart, symbolizing seven painful moments she felt as the mother of Jesus: the prophecy of Simeon, the flight into Egypt, losing Jesus in Jerusalem and finding him in the temple, Jesus traveling to Calvary, being with Jesus at the cross, taking him down from the cross, and burying him. Elaborate pictures made out of fifty different kinds of seeds and beans depict each of the seven sorrows.
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