Heavenly Holy Week

During Easter Week, Holy Week or Semana Santa— whatever you choose to call it—people in Mexico can be divided into two groups: those who go on vacation and those who do not. To anyone new to Mexico, I should explain that there is an option. Schools close during the week, as do many offices and even factories.  Those that attempt to remain open face a severe, if temporary, labor shortage. Even the government—in a country that takes separation of church and state very seriously—closes down on Thursday and Friday, usually giving bureaucrats Wednesday afternoon off as well.

Holy Week is not a good time to make last minute travel arrangements in Mexico. Hordes pour into seaside resorts while at American and Canadian ski resorts Spanish is often heard more frequently than English in queues waiting to board the lifts. Cities in Mexico become almost blessedly empty, many luxury hotels offering decidedly nonluxury rates during the week.

Those who do not go on vacation also can be divided into two groups: the devout, who believe Holy Week should be kept holy, and everyone else. Among the latter are those who at least attempt to soak up a bit of the local culture that makes Holy Week in Mexico so special. The Passion Play in Iztapalapa at Cerro de la Estrella (the Hill of the Star)—which, it was recently discovered, actually covers a pagan pyramid—is the most notable event in Mexico City. As many as two million people attend the annual reenactment of the Crucifixion. Iztapalapa is one of the more proletarian boroughs or delegaciones in the capital, not considered especially dangerous during daylight hours, but not a place to flash a Rolex either. Crowds, dust and litter can make taking in the Passion Play less than enjoyable, but then a crucifixion is not supposed to be fun.

Far more dramatic, for anyone who can snag accommodations, is Taxco, where on Thursday and Friday nights black-hooded, bare-backed penitents, weighed down beneath 90-pound loads of thorns, trudge barefoot accompanied by half-naked, cross-bearing flagellants who whip themselves with nail-studded lashes. Women, their unshod feet in chains, merely march hunched over, but the position after some hours becomes so painful they later have difficulty standing up.

San Luis Potosi is home to perhaps the most memorable of Holy Week spectacles with the Procesión de Silencio, rivaled only by the one in Seville. Led by a penitent in a great conical hood who bears a heavy cross, hushed candle-bearing votaries depart from a church in the center of the city, stifl ing sound and muffl ing footsteps as they flow toward the Cathedral on the Zócalo. Others follow, many weighed down by the images they carry; the faithful ooze into the streets throughout the night, returning eventually to whence they began.

The Procession itself is not actually silent: chains clank, drums beat an echoing lament, and flutes, guitars, and violins play a sorrowful dirge. It makes for a night to remember.