Holy Week in Guatemala

Processions of faith

In Holy Week Guatemala takes its faith to the streets in processions, usually organised by a hermandad, a religious brotherhood. Each procession carries floats bearing images of the Passion of Christ or of the Virgin Mary, accompanied by funeral marches. UNESCO, which inscribed Holy Week in Guatemala on its Representative List in 2022, describes processions, vigils, funeral marches, seasonal food, and the making of carpets, “orchards” and altars, with houses and buildings decorated across communities and people of every background taking part.

The celebrations blend Catholic tradition brought by the Spanish with echoes of Maya belief. A butterfly drawn on a sawdust carpet for a procession of Christ, for example, recalls an insect that for the Maya symbolised the Sun and the afterlife — an image that appears nowhere in the Holy Week of Spain.

Carpets and cucuruchos

Antigua Guatemala is known for its alfombras, temporary carpets of coloured sawdust, sand, flowers and other materials laid along the processional routes. Each one is a work of art that takes hours to make and is destroyed as the procession walks over it. The bearers, dressed in purple robes, are called cucuruchos, “cones”, after the tall pointed hats penitents once wore — a custom that has since declined.