If you are interested in the statues of penance from Taxco, read on. If not, skip this one!
I forgot to explain my pictures from Taxco last time. The three pictures of people doing penances actually represent a yearly ritual in the town that occurs during Semana Santa (Holy Week).
I found this description of Semana Santa in Taxco on a photography website: (Taken From: http://www.om-shantiphotography.co.uk/page6.htm)
“Emerging as the incense clouds recede, the Animas, or “bent ones,” are bare footed, shackled in heavy chains and dressed in black cloths with hoods or veils obscuring their identity. They bow towards the street in repentance, not allowed to stand erect through the entire procession; remaining hunched and crooked like the streets they must cross. If the pain becomes too great, they are permitted to drop to all fours but never are they to stand up straight. Their penance is to walk with their faces to the ground, seeing only the shackled feet in front of them. They do this in remembrance of Christ and in repentance for sins. Some are unwed mothers, others the mothers of sick children. Despite this public spectacle, each reason is deeply personal and, in many cases, known only to them and their God.
Moving behind the Animas are the Encruzados who, in silhouette, look like a sea of living, breathing, bleeding crucifixes as they somberly and silently march, arms outstretched, to the cadence of a drum. As they approach, it becomes clear that they are not nailed to crosses but rather have their arms wrapped around punishing bundles of thorn branches tied to their bared shoulders. Each man determines the weight of his suffering by choosing the number of barbed canes to carry; the usual bundle weighs about a hundred pounds and is several feet long. The cane bundles are tied with horse hair ropes across their back and shoulders, while their hands reach around the bundle in the awkward and painful position they must maintain for hours on end, arms extended and aching from the cruel noonday sun into the endless Mexican night. They are accompanied by a team of family and friends, who whisper comfort to them and help shoulder some of the burden when the pain becomes too great. The pain is evident, yet the penitentes make not a sound. Theirs is to suffer in silence for sins, tradition, and family. This has been the way of Semana Santa for 500 years.
The procession stops as men dressed in black hoods and bared chests walk through the crowd looking like executioners, wielding hand crafted tools of torture and heavy wooden crosses. Only the slightest glint of eyes are visible beneath the ominous hoods. They hand the crosses to their assistants and, instead of exacting punishment on a criminal, they begin to ceremoniously beat themselves across the back with crudely crafted whips of braided rope and nails, alternating between their right and left sides, leaving two raw and bleeding patches of flesh. They flagellate themselves as an act of penance before God and his bloodletting on the cross. The crowd is absolutely silent, leaving only the sound of the ropes cutting through the air and the nails ripping into the flesh. After several minutes, they stand and slowly walk to the next point where again they drop to their knees to repeat the bloody act of repentance, an act carried out dozens of times through the night.”
