Guatemala: Ice Cream Saints (cont.)

After the men’s grandiose spectacle, it was the women’s turn.  Smaller in size, their floats hadn’t the weight of the first super structure.  But in heels, in nylons, over cobbles and through the endless carpets now no more than mulch, the women kept their poise along with their footing. 

The Virgin Mary and her sacred heart, Veronica, she of the veil of blood, and the still no-less controversial Mary Magdalene glided along on lace-covered shoulders that mirrored the grace of the heavenly ladies aloft.  The women’s penance was no less devout than the men’s at the head of the cavalcade, just served with more style.
 
The journey went into the night.  Ten hours of backbreaking toil endured out of respect for a two thousand-year old happening on a hill six thousand miles from here.  The procession was not only funereal in mood, it was carnival in its execution.  Armies of vendors flitted about the main event crying out over the music, announcing their wares of rubber yo-yos, sliced mangos, straw hats or the people’s favorite ice cream, helado.  The hawkers’ economic frenzy matched the religious high chasing through the throngs.  Tourists too chipped in as they stood gawping above the heads of the much shorter local folk.  Pockets were picked, bags were slashed, and wallets nabbed. 

The crimes were never violent, just immaculate.  A roll of Quetzals the size of donuts fell to the ground from the pocket of one large, white, pot-bellied foreigner.  A little Mayan girl’s hand reached between several rows of legs snagging the wad.  The girl saw me out the corner of her eye.  I smiled; she smiled, hesitantly.  I winked, and she disappeared along with her prize, enough for several months of family comfort.  Was it so different in Jerusalem all those years ago?  Semana Santa made you believe all things happened upon were heaven sent.

 Through it all a man’s face was as often seen as Christ’s wistful expression.  It was Brother Pedro’s.  In June 2001, Pope John Paul II arrived at the church of San Francisco in La Antigua to make the do-gooder, who’d helped the poor, into something the town had waited almost a quarter century for.  Brother Pedro, the missionary who’d walked amongst the people had become Guatemala’s, and moreover, La Antigua’s first saint.  He’d said when he first arrived that he’d come here “to live and die.”  Little did the Brother know he’d be reborn.

In the distance, a wailing wafted gently through the air; the procession was somewhere else for the moment; in a few hours it would be back here.  Children giggled, a ball bounced, a hose was watering another carpet completed ahead of time.  Then the ringing of tiny bells.  Everyone here knew what that meant; you didn’t need to see, their ringing was enough: Helado.  The ice cream men had returned.  My eyes remained shut, remembering my dizzy, otherworldliness in the perfumed smoke of that first day.  The angels.  The holy ghosts.  The people cried at the sight of their Savior on the cross, even though this year, as with every year they knew he would rise again.  And still they cried.  They believed.  Their faith wasn’t passion or wild desire.  Theirs' was a willingness to be open, open to all things despite the forgone conclusion. 

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