Holy week is a big deal here. The saints are taken out, dressed and paraded round the streets in daytime and candlelit rituals. The church in Perucho looks more beautiful than ever.
I have the opportunity to see holy week through the eyes of an Ecuadorian tourist as Michael is guiding some local tours. We first get a tour round the church and up the bell tower where one particularly vocal member of the group who’s been helping Michael remember all the facts, announces ‘80% of my friends are lesbians”. Ok, perhaps I came in late on that conversation?!
We descend in small buses out of Perucho, into the pitch dark, climbing gradually down the mountain on a bumpy track to a beautiful hosteria. We sit down for traditional Holy Week fanesca and follow it by a good dose of ghost stories told by Michael’s cousin the owner of the hosteria. A good old Ecuadorian favourite.. As we sit in the semi darkness, he brings us under his spell. He has us captivated. The very place where we have been eating, there have been manifestations experienced by all of the family for years. The area around us is uninhabited and centuries of local people have been scared away by demons, ghosts and apparitions of the devil as a goat.
The tour takes us back to Perucho, to sit in the mass. The church is packed and somebody has been so kind as to save me a seat on the front row. Yesterday the priest didn’t turn up, today he has made a real effort. He emerges from the back of the church, his clergy in tow, his whites pressed and his hands clasped. It does not occur to me until we are over and hour and a half through the service when he has taken centre stage to sing a self composed song, that he is the spitting image of Robbie Coltrane in Nuns on the Run. After this I notice the row behind me have left. The priest is sweating profusely, he is in full swing. I think he’s been watching too many gospel channels on cable. Michael gives us a nod that signals the get out of jail free card and we leave. Outside are milling many people, the huge doors of the church are open and many people come and go. The mass is a long one and only the dedicated last.
Friday we head to an area to the South of Quito. We are here to watch the Easter Play (more technical name to follow). It’s an amazing production. I am staggered by the scale, participation and the costumes. The ‘stage’ is marked out by branches and the audience surrounds 360 degrees. There must be over 100 characters. The immaculately dressed Roman centurions are key and later after they file through town they take position at the head of each pew in a very packed church. As the different scenes takes place, the dramatisation moves through La Merced, the characters and followers (hundreds) and the microphones are plugged into mobile generator speaker systems least the crowd miss a word. Jesus carries his cross over a mile to the church. Uniquely here in La Merced they also have people dressed with turbantes, huge black and white 5 metre tall hats, the bearers supported by friends and helped under telephone wires and the like. The parade is then swarmed by naughty demons with black gothic boots with spars, long wigs and fantastically elaborate masks. Their role is to play havoc, they have no law, until it is announced the next day that Jesus has risen. They really take to their roles, scaring children and puling at women’s skirts.
All the characters congregate in the church (save the demons). The front part of the church has been completely covered by a wall constructed out of branches and on this placed Jesus on the cross. The small church is brimming with people. The service is the called seven words but it is long, about 3 hours with different speakers, songs and videos presentations and considerably more than seven words. It’s all a little much now that I can’t help but understand nor shut myself off. I leave for outside with the constant stream of people entering and leaving. At 2.30pm the demons arrive again in swarms and enter the church parading up and down making as much noise and disruption as possible. Then I notice smoke coming from the top of the wall of leaves, then fireworks start spraying from the front of the church, there is pandemonium with the noise of the demons. At 3pm every year there is a thunderstorm and precisely on queue there is a torrential downpour. The dark clouds let rip and pound on the tin roof. I can safely say I’ve never seen anything like it!
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