Abstract
At midnight of Sunday, 9 April 2017, the Sunday known as Palm Sunday during Holy Week (Semana Santa), the streets of Guatemala City were packed with parishioners, passers-by, and strollers watching the procession of Jesús Nazareno de los Milagros, “King of the Universe”. The procession’s itinerary takes almost eighteen hours to complete and it is one of the most popular processions among Catholics in Guatemala. What was I, a female anthropologist taking notes and pictures, doing as part of the entourage of the image of Jesus? The question is not gratuitous because this specific space, namely, the entourage itself, is reserved exclusively for male bearers, the so-called cucuruchos. This ethnographic incursion took place within the framework of an ongoing research project on the construction of gender subjectivities in urban religious spaces in Guatemala City, a project that attempts to answer larger questions on the various processes of subject formation within religious spaces. In this article, however, I will focus exclusively on the construction of gender subjectivities during the celebration of the Holy Week in Guatemala City. This paper discusses how a religious space can be analyzed as a “place of encounter” that will intensify social relations coming from beyond, and going beyond, the processional space itself.
Highlights
At midnight on Sunday 9 April 2017, the Sunday known as Palm Sunday during the Holy Week, the streets were crowded with parishioners, passersby, and strollers observing the procession of Jesus the Nazarene of the Miracles, “King of the Universe”
Running a course of almost eighteen hours, this procession summons some of the largest crowds of catholic parishioners
What was I, an anthropologist woman, doing taking notes and photographs from within the cortege of the image of Jesus? I do not pose this question gratuitously because this specific space, within the cortege of the image of Jesus, is reserved for male bearers. From this somewhat unusual vantage point, this article aims to understand the relation between space and the formation of gender subjectivities during the Catholic celebration of the Holy Week in Guatemala City
Summary
At midnight on Sunday 9 April 2017, the Sunday known as Palm Sunday during the Holy Week, the streets were crowded with parishioners, passersby, and strollers observing the procession of Jesus the Nazarene of the Miracles, “King of the Universe”. I do not pose this question gratuitously because this specific space, within the cortege of the image of Jesus, is reserved for male bearers (the cucuruchos) From this somewhat unusual vantage point, this article aims to understand the relation between space and the formation of gender subjectivities during the Catholic celebration of the Holy Week in Guatemala City. Week, I conducted ten short interviews and after Holy Week, I met again with six of those already interviewed (three women and three men) for longer conversations Taking this mix of ethnographic notes and interviews as my point of departure, I argue in this article, along with Massey (1994), that the procession, as a religious space, can be understood as a “meeting place” that intensifies social relations coming from beyond and going beyond the processional space itself. Before embarking in this ethnographic analysis , I will first lay bare how I approach the relation between gender and religious spaces theoretically
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