To the rhythm of the trumpets
Once the procession approached Santa Maria Chapel, its destination, a crowd blocked the last hundred yards of the official itinerary. The faithful scrambled to postpone the end of the religious parade for fear of their upcoming apprehension—as strong as the unholy withdrawal from a potent drug—which would overtake them as soon as the float carrying the Nazarene crossed the threshold of the main chapel door amidst the cadence of the Spanish national anthem. It would mean the end of that year and the beginning of a drawn-out countdown until the next Holy Week. They were not about to allow it, not yet. Other volunteers replaced the worn-out cargadores underneath the float and, ignoring diocesan regulations, turned it around, swinging and moving it along the road with such grace that the figure of the Nazarene seemed to be walking. They carried it back to meet that of Our Lady. The latter had trailed behind and was before the Royal Prison, about two hundred yards away.
From “The Silver Teacup.”
These events occurred when I was a child. Now the crowds have changed. Some people show devotion and pray. Some admire the extraordinary beauty of their images and the way they are paraded. Many enjoy the processions as a religious festival: smoking, eating, and chatting as the portable altars pass. One expects these reactions in a country no longer Catholic, for the state has no official religion.
Lecciones de Antigua, Guatemala: la verdad sobre la colonización de Hispanoamérica.
Antigua, Guatemala, contiene evidencia esencial de lo que los españoles hicieron en América. En 1979, la UNESCO lo nombró Patrimonio de la Humanidad porque “conserva la integridad de su diseño del siglo XVI y la integridad física de la mayor parte de su patrimonio construido”. En 1527, los españoles fundaron Antigua, la antigua capital de Guatemala, diseñando sus calles horizontales y verticales como un perfecto tablero de ajedrez. Esparcidos por la ciudad había numerosas iglesias, conventos, monasterios e incluso una universidad, en donde la enseñanza se equiparaba con la que se recibía en Salamanca, uno de los centros de estudios más importantes de Europa. Desafortunadamente, el 29 de Julio de 1773, un terremotos y seis meses de continuas replicas dañaron muchos edificios, obligando al gobierno a trasladar la capital a donde actualmente se encuentra Ciudad de Guatemala. Antigua fue abandonada tal como estaba. La madre naturaleza mantuvo a Antigua como una prueba irrevocable de la verdad sobre la colonización española de América.
