Primer Viernes

I'm not sure what all the ecclesiastical history is, but the forty days of Cuaresma, (the forty days preceding Easter Sunday) are a really big deal here. Steph and I decided to visit a local Catholic church on Primer Viernes, the first Friday (March 3 this year), to see what the goings-on entailed. We had planned on going to the ten o'clock mass, but when we got to the church, there was no mass to be had, just lots and lots of people from all over the city and the surrounding towns. We didn't take any pictures inside the church, but it was something a little different to what I normally see at church. All the benches had been moved to form an outer ring, leaving just a narrow pathway around the inside of the church walls where hundreds of people were praying to the images, who had been dressed up in their finest and brought out and put in glass cases for all the world to worship. Besides the official candles at the front of the church and in front of each saint's image, there were also hundreds, perhaps thousands, of candles that reverent churchgoers had bought from the handy vendors on the church steps. These candles are placed on the floor in groups of ten or twenty or fifty, and lighted. The candle's owner kneels beside or behind his candles and prays, sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes until the candles sputter out, and they're not small candles. Luckily, there is a man in the church with a little spade and pail, and he scrapes the wax off the floor after the candles have all died, leaving room for the next person to come and fill the spot. It's kneeling room only on the floor of the church, and standing room only at the front of the church, where patrons hold a few candles at a time. The smoke makes it a little hard to see clearly, but the church looked like it had been decked out in its finest burgundy fabrics. After observing for a while inside, we decided it would be easier to breathe outside the church. We sat in the corner of the church's porch, behind the hubbub of the lines waiting to get into the church, the vendors selling cards with prayers and pictures on them, or jello cups, or books explaining all the holy sacraments, or cotton candy, or jewelry, or tamales, or flowers, or colorful baskets, or candles. Our little corner was actually fairly peaceful, but from it we could see all the activity. We tried to talk to our neighbors in the shade, a couple of visitors from outside the city who had come for the Primer Viernes celebration, but they didn't speak Spanish very well, and we didn't speak their language (I still can't tell Mam from K'iche from Ixil when I hear them spoken), so it was a short, not very informative conversation. I decided to take some pictures. Fortuitously, the camera we had decided on before coming here has a swivel LCD screen that lets you take pictures while you're not actually looking through the viewfinder, so I sat with my legs just a little apart and put the camera between them so it couldn't be seen unless someone was directly in front of me looking in my direction, pulled out the LCD screen and swiveled it so that I could see what I was pointing at, and started shooting pictures. Since Steph is interested in trajes típicos (traditional outfits different in each town) and there were so many people from so many places, I tried to get some good pictures of interesting trajes that we don't usually see here in Xela. I was having so much fun I didn't want to stop, so I ended up taking nearly three hundred photos. The crowds were so large and the movement so constant that it was a little hard to find good shots, and sometimes when I did find them, by the time the shutter clicked, the shot had moved and I had a picture of something else, usually a blur of movement. Steph made some friends while I was playing with the camera. When people came to sit by us (as it got hotter, more people tried to fit in the little shade along the sides of the porch, she talked to them and asked them about the holiday, and about the church, and about their trajes típicos (apparently, it's not something you can talk about if you're from here... people will get offended if you even mention that you like their corte (traditional skirt), so it's one time when it's really nice to be gringos because everyone figures we're clueless enough that we didn't mean any offense, and they'll talk to us.) Every few minutes someone would come by trying to sell something, but we always declined. A few minutes before we left a man came by selling hand-woven chalecos (vests) and blankets. Rather than directly telling him I wasn't interested, I told him I doubted he had anything of my size. Oops. It was a challenge now. He pulled out his largest chaleco and told me it was surely big enough for me. I doubted it, so I was going to show him he was wrong. I took it, stood up, tried it on, and realized it actually fit. It was still a little small, but I could do up the buttons on the front. It was too late now. I had tried on the merchandise, and we were in full bargaining before I realized I had more or less committed myself to buying it. His first offer was 180 quetzales, which was ridiculous. I told him I wasn't interested, I didn't need a wool vest since it was just going to get hotter, and I didn't have nearly that much money with me. He dropped to Q160 or something, and I told him it was impossible. All I had was Q100 and he certainly wouldn't want to sell it for so little. Actually, he did want to sell it for so little. He walked away with my Q100 (US$13.20) and I had a new vest. It was okay. I like it, even if Steph will only let me wear it on special ocassions (like Halloween). As I looked at it closer, I realized the wool hadn't been carded as well as I had expected. Woven into the vest itself are pieces of grass, little sticks, and plant seeds. There's no contesting that it's the real thing, from authentic Quetzalteco sheep and pasture. It was a great way to spend a Friday morning. Here are a few of the pictures. (I didn't want to upload them all to the new blog)