For Colombia, a country that has a Catholic population of 90%, the week-long celebration of Easter, or “Semana Santa” in Spanish, is the most important religious festival of the year.
Easter additionally is a huge economic pull for Colombian tourism.
Northern Colombia: Mompox
The small town of Mompox is widely known as the inspiration of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s world-renowned magical realism novels. However, during Easter Mompox also plays host to some of the most unique religious celebrations in Colombia.
As far back as the 1560s, wealthy people from this small Colombian town would donate clothes, jewelry and paintings to the church as a way of expunging their sins.
Nowadays, the Serenade to the Deceased is a formal procession that takes to the streets of Mompox, where town residents dress in their finest clothes, congregating in the cemetery to spend the night among the dead. Candles and flowers are placed around the graves, and music is played throughout the night.
Central Colombia: Bogota
Bogota (Photo: Julian Castro)
Colombia’s capital of Bogota effectively shuts down throughout Holy Week. Shops, restaurants, museums and galleries close; schools and offices send their attendees home. In fact, the only business that boom are of the religious variety, as churches throughout the city open their doors to hundreds, if not thousands, of worshipers a day.
MORE: Holy Week widely celebrated in Bogota
Another important site just outside of Bogota is Monserrate mountain, rising to an altitude of over 10,000 feet. There’s both a cable car and a funicular railway for non-religious tourists to reach the top of the mountain but religious pilgrims choose to climb their way up to the small white church on the mountain’s top, and a shrine devoted to ‘El Señor Caido’ – the Fallen Lord.
The shrine receives a daily influx of pilgrims making the journey to pray to the statue of Christ, but there are thousands more during Holy Week. To accommodate for this, the pathway has been renovated this year and opens from 4am to 1pm daily for both worshipers and tourists to walk up the mountain. However, pregnant women, children shorter than 3 feet and people over 75 years old are not permitted to make the ascent.
Southwest Colombia: Popayan and Ipiales
Popayan, located in southern Colombia, hosts one of the biggest Easter festivals in the country and boasts Colombia’s largest concentration of churches per capita, according to Colombia’s official tourist website, ProExport. The 400 year old celebrations surrounding Holy Week are now so notorious that in 2009 the event was added to the UNESCO list of Intangible World Heritage Sites.
There are three major celebrations that take place in Popayan during Easter week. The first, on Palm Sunday, is a procession where palm leaves are blessed. A night time ceremony on Holy Tuesday follows, where men carry images of Christ from St Augustine church to the city center, and are welcomed by men in red robes who spread incense, chime bells and carry a crucifix.
Good Friday’s procession is the most symbolic; The resurrected body is made of ivory and tortoise shell and portrays the resting body of Christ after his descent.
In addition to the processions, Popayan organizes religious music festivals that are held in the colonial churches and feature both Colombian and international musicians.
In Ipiales, a town that borders Ecuador, sits one of the most fascinating churches in South America. Built at one end of a bridge that sit above the river Guáitara, the church of Our Lady of Las Lajas is
Sources
- Se espera turismo semana santa crezca 15% (Finanza Personales)
- The World Factbook: Colombia (CIA)
- Montserrate listo para Semana Santa (El Tiempo)
- Celebraciones de Semana Santa en Colombia (ProExport Colombia)
- Risalda entre las rutas seguras para semana santa (La Tarde)
- (Caracol Radio)