SEMANA SANTA

Semana Santa is probably the biggest vacation week in Mexico (at least for the coastal towns).  Mexicans flee the inland areas by the thousands for a week at the ocean.  They arrive mostly in pickup trucks with sometimes a dozen or more riding in the truck bed.  Some will even sleep on the beach or dozens will bunk down in one small hotel room.  For the young people it is sort of like Easter Week in The States (get very drunk and party, party, party).  Mostly it is the whole family.  The sand is a sea of brown bodies and colorful umbrellas for as far as the eye can see.   Local residents will normally stay home and avoid the mobs.  Even if you stay indoors you will hear them.  Cars and trucks drive up and down the streets blasting music, singing and hanging out of the car windows with cans of beer..

Of course it is also a very religious week  The bells have been ringing all week.  After a while you get sort of used to the church bells, but not the cannons.  When that thing blasts away, you will drop everything in your hands.  Some one told me that the cannons are to frighten away evil spirits and that is why they blow them off during Holidays.  Who know?  Mexican religion is a mix of Catholic, pagan, and a lot of superstitions. 
 Not only are there a lot of services in the churches, but you also have the enactment of the last days of Christ.  Beginning on Palm Sunday, you will find palm fronds everywhere.  Some people carry whole palm leaves, but most will buy little handmade things of palm leaves, like the ones entering the church.  Somewhere Christ will arrive on a donkey while people throw palm leaves in front of his procession.  I tried all day to find out where it was to take a picture.  No one I talked to seemed to know where the pageant was taking place, so I missed it.

Next day I asked my lady at the coffee shop.  She called somebody (maybe a church) and told me that it would continue on Good Friday from 10:00 to 11:00 starting at the other end of the Malecon.  I arrived early and noticed that little placards had been put up for each of the "stations of the cross"  Ten o'clock came and went and then finally I saw the Roman soldiers on horse back arriving.  Sure enough a bloody Christ was in the middle of the throng being savagely flayed.  Behind Christ were the Jewish rabbis demanding that he be put to death.  Then came all the followers, crying Marys and a few angels.  Each stop took much too long while all they did was to beat up on Jesus.

By 11:00 they had not even reached station V, so I parked myself on the terrace of a lovely cantina overlooking the Malecon.   I knew it would end at Plaza Cardenas which was at least a mile away, so I ordered a cerveca.  Jesus was having a worse day, but I knew I could not last without a little stop.  When the procession reached the amphitheater, I thought things would get more interesting, but NO!  It was just more flogging (although one of his followers was now helping to carry the cross).

After that, I walked ahead to one of my coffee houses at the Plaza Cardenas, and had time for a snack before the procession reached me.  Just as they were approaching the amphitheater, they stripped Jesus of his robe where the soldiers fought over it,.  I thought they could have chosen a slimmer Christ (I don't remember seeing a fat Jesus before). They finally strapped him to the cross (they don't really nail him to it)  By the time they hoisted him up for all to jeer at, I had been basically standing in the sun for three hours.  After he dies on the cross they take him down (the Marys do something with the body).  Then they place him on a placard and carry him out of the Plaza and up the street.  But, I saw that last year and decided I had had enough of Christ for one day.  Sorry about the photos, but it was very hard to fight through the crowds to get a good photo. 


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