Semana Santa - The People Love a Parade

Semana Santa is so weird, I love it. So this week, the week before Easter, all of Latin America just goes crazy. Everything (really, everything) closes down and they throw like a million processions. Where I am, in Xela every church has their own procession which generally consists of a bunch of men and women in purple, a marching band, some kids dressed up as Jesus and Mary, and a bunch of huge floats depicting Jesus in different stages of Crucifixion. Xela is about the size of Boulder (not that big, smaller than Denver for sure) and there were like 20 different processions yesterday. This has been going on all week. These people love a parade. I kinda love it too actually. It's been really interesting to watch Xela transform into a big fiesta town. Usually the streets are empty by 8, but last night in the park it was shoulder to shoulder. A lot of the women in Xela dress in Mayan ropa tipica, so it's really interesting to see this mix of traditional Mayan culture and Catholic tradition coming together under floats and set to marching band music. The floats are really cool too. It's like a competition between different churches because all the floats show pretty much the same thing, so they all try to trick them out the most. A lot of them will have neon light halos on Mary and Jesus which is funny and reminds me of Vegas, and one Jesus was even dripping blood like a fountain. wow.