streets of wax

As I mentioned in the last post, last week was La Semana Santa. Unfortunately, I missed almost the entire thing, except for Easter Sunday, which wasn't really the same as the rest of the week. Actually, I have kind of mixed feelings about that... On the one hand, I'm really upset that I missed such a unique cultural experience (for an American...). On the other hand, I'm extremely relieved. I guess you could say that La Semana Santa is a lot like Carnaval - except sad. Maybe a little less highly excessive drinking and general belligerence. In the weeks between Carnaval and La Semana Santa posters appeared all over the city, no longer the cheery looking ones of Carnaval, but rather extremely depressing, dark close-ups of Jesus with lots of blood, or the skeletal form of the crucifix... They were everywhere (but I can't find an image of one...). Then, in the days before the "celebrations began," you would see little children walking down the streets with KKK hats in their hands. There were stores with little figurines with the same hats. Like the posters, they were everywhere. But during La Semana Santa, those hats multiply into the hundreds, and sing solemnly, and chant, and walk slowwwwly in lines down the street. Now, I know that in this case it has absolutely nothing to do with the KKK, but whenever I saw one, I would get chills! I honestly don't think I would have been able to leave my house, had I not gone to Italy for the week, without having nightmares for a month!

So fortunately (I guess?), I missed that. In fact, there didn't really seem to be much at all happening on Sunday as I wandered around the city. Until 6 in the evening. I had heard that morning (through a little bit of Spanish eavesdropping, of which I am actually pretty proud) something about "...que ir a la plaza de San Antonio a las seis..." but I had missed the original question, which would have told me what exactly was at the plaza at 6. So I figured I would just head in that direction around that time and see for myself. When I got there, there were probably a couple hundred people standing in the plaza, all talking, and all facing sort of the same direction, but nothing was actually happening. After waiting a little while, a marching band appeared coming towards the plaza (in which there is a large church), playing very loud music, with a thundering doom dooom doom doooom... Very intense and exciting. They stopped playing for a while, but I could see the doors of the church open, and the giant doorway fill completely, bottom to top, with little candles! And then a huuuge statue of the crucifix (cruz de guía, that seemed to be floating in the air. The band suddenly started playing again, and Jesus emerged on his cross, surrounded by little white candles, and sitting on a very large, bottomless box (for lack of a better word). This was being carried by maybe 20-30 men, which you couldn't see (on a side note, apparently they train for this for months beforehand because they have to carry this thing for hours and hours at a time). The whole thing moved very, verrrry slowly, and would stop from time to time (to catch it's breath?). Gradually, the procession made it to a side street off of the plaza, turned the corner and disappeared, along with many of the people gathered in the plaza. Some followed, some simply seemed to leave. I left, too, and went home to study...

The next morning on my way to the university, I stepped out of my building and walked down my little street to one of the bigger ones, only to discover that it was completely covered in candle wax. And I don't mean just in one little spot - the entire street was covered. All the way up the street, up, up, up all the way to the plaza de S. Antonio, which was also completely covered in wax.

That was Monday. Already that morning I could see street cleaners down some of the smaller streets, scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing away. They are still scrubbing today. Today is Thursday.