Semana Santa and my Birthday

One of the coolest traditions during Holy Week in Guatemala is the making of "Alfombras" or carpets on the streets. The carpets are made by residents, friends, and families along processional routes. They are offered up as a sacrifice in anticipation of the procession that will destroy them by marching through the painstaking and fantastic creations. When one procession has gone by, a clean-up crew follows removing the remains. Almost immediately residents may begin to build yet another carpet in anticipation of the next procession later that day or the next.

The custom of making carpets was brought from Spain and the Canary Islands. However, it is believed that in pre-Hispanic times the Maya made carpets for various ceremonial reasons. Possibly the carpets were used in alters to induce positive energies and absorb negative ones. Thus the constant destruction of the carpet is necessary to remove bad energies and bring new positive ones with the construction of a new carpet or offering.

The Christian history for carpet making appears to stem from the Bible itself. The Canonical Gospels describe how Jesus rode into Jerusalem, and how the people laid down their cloaks in front of him, and also laid down small branches of trees.

There are two basic kinds of procession carpets. Ones made from colored sawdust and ones made from just about anything else. This would include flowers, pine needles, fruit, vegetables, rocks, dolls, candles and other objects. In many cases there are combinations of all materials.

Making these carpets is how I spent my birthday this year. I am going to let the pictures do most of the talking for this post...

Here we are on the street in Antigua right in front of Siggy's store, Casa de los Gigantes", laying out the base for the "alfombra" we are going to build. This is a tradition throughout Guatemala, but it is especially magical in Antigua...

Here we are carefully measuring out the spacing of our stencils...

Here I am testing to see if this board is going to be strong enough to hold me and I am about to lay down the first background color...

Here is the crew building away, this really is a painstaking process...

Here is a shot of the carpet about 3/4 of the way done...

Fast forward about six hours and here I am putting the final touches on our work of art...

And here is our crew at standing over our masterpiece...

We finished this about 15 minutes before the parade came strolling through and destroyed it. You can see the words "Paz", "Amor" and "Vida" spaced throughout the carpet, these translate to Peace, Love and Life. The tree design represents the circle of life... and here comes the parade...

The floats are carried around for sometimes up to 12 hours at a time through the streets of Antigua. Throughout the weekend there is almost always a parade going on, and sometimes up to three. There are a lot of politics that go into determining the routes and timing of each parade. There is a constant rotation of groups who do the carrying, and often they can be found partying in their off hours waiting for the next shift to come... its all a ton of fun!

(I don't know why this is underlined and I can't change it!)

And there is our work of art, a half day's time investment under the feet of some trumpeters...

The carpet was begging us to make some "sawdust angels"

Here are some other carpets that we found on the streets of Antigua...

Can you see the face of Jesus here???