Holy Week in Popayán

Five nights of processions

Holy Week in Popayán, in the department of Cauca, is one of Colombia’s oldest traditions, and has been celebrated since the colonial period. From Tuesday to Saturday, five processions devoted to Mary, Jesus, the Cross, the Laying in the Tomb and the Resurrection follow a two-kilometre route through the centre of the “White City”, in a cross-shaped course laid out since the conquest and passing its main churches.

Each procession is built around pasos, wooden platforms carrying flower-decked statues that depict episodes of the Passion. Most of the images date from the late eighteenth century, and they come from Spanish, Andalusian, Quito, Italian and local workshops. The pasos rest on four bars at the front and four at the back and are carried on the shoulders of the cargueros. Each night opens with the high cross and acolytes, followed by a police band, the paso of St John the Evangelist and the other images.

A year of preparation

According to UNESCO, which inscribed the processions in 2009, preparations last a whole year and follow rules passed down from generation to generation, with children taking part from the age of five. The processions have their own vocabulary, and every role is precisely assigned.

Popayán’s first recorded processions date from 1556, and in 1558 King Philip II signed royal charters authorising them. A sixteenth-century chronicle tells how Indigenous rebels approaching the city at night saw an endless line of moving lights, took it for an army with torches and withdrew — it was the Holy Thursday procession of penitents. In the colonial era the city’s wealth adorned the images with gold, silver and emeralds; the processions grew less lavish during the wars of independence and the economic crises that followed.