
Selling palms for Palm Sunday in Cusco, photo by Judy Kalt Skeels
I’ve always been curious about the things people consider important enough to celebrate on a regular basis – whether daily, weekly, or yearly. For example, when a person walks into a room on any given day in the cities of Bolivia or Peru, they’re expected to greet everyone in the room, with words, or often a hug and a kiss. Likewise, when they leave the room, they take leave of each person with words, a hug or kiss. Forgetting to do so implies coldness or a lack of respect. Greetings and leave-takings represent little micro rituals that tie people together. Depending on your comfort level, you can adapt and embrace these rituals and participate in them, or simply observe them from afar.
But what about the bigger rituals: the ones that happen on Sundays or holidays? I was really excited this year to be in the Andes for holy week, or Semana Santa. I knew this would be a big deal in any household. I decided it would be most fun to spend it in Chuquisaca with my friend Cristina and her family.
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Maria Cristina and her daughter Natalie
Thursday night after work, Cristina, her husband and children and I drove to a small patch of land they own on the outskirts of the city. The soil seemed rocky and rough, but they had a good five square yards or so of tall cornstalks and they wanted us to harvest it before neighbors and birds might come to help themselves. We selected the stalks that had ears of corn that were firm on top, and cut them at the base, then separating the stalks from the ears. The stalks would be sold for cows to eat, and we brought the ears to the car, driving home in the dark. They told me that we would be fasting in the morning, and traveling the ‘way of the cross’ up the hill in commemoration of the suffering and death of Jesus.
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Marcelina and Aniceto, Cristina’s parents
I found it challenging to focus on so much suffering while fasting in the cold and dark, far away from home. But I decided not to turn away from it or leave early, and I stuck it out until we arrived home four hours later, having met up with several of Chris’s siblings and their families who headed jubilantly back down the hill with us.
I thought about the gory movie about Jesus’ crucifixion and the sadistic and disturbing images it brought up even in the trailer. I also thought about the recent incident in Newton Massachusetts where an athletic team from a Catholic school shouted religious slurs against the Jewish community – calling them Christ killers. How ironic from a historical perspective, since Jesus himself was Jewish and was slain by the Romans. He was betrayed by his own friends as well as by religious leaders he had criticized – all in all a pretty mixed group.
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Preparing humintas (corn cakes)
Easter itself was tame by comparison. Nobody got especially dressed up, but we did go to church. I don’t remember the service being especially exciting or inspiring. Cris led me into a side area to contemplate a life-sized mannequin of Jesus lying bloodied and dead in a glass coffin – which I found odd in relation to my own expectations of a Christian Easter, since I think of it as an occasion to cast aside death and contemplate spring, new life, rebirth, fertility. Afterwards we had yet another family feast, this time with grilled fish.
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Esmeralda and Jorge grill fish for Easter
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Stations of the cross with traveling megaphone – dawn, Sucre