Re-enacting Crucifixion With Variations

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31942, 20 March 1969, Page 12

Re-enacting Crucifixion With Variations

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter —Copyright)

MEXICO CITY.

Mexican villages are preparing for re-enact-ment of the Crucifixion on Good Friday with variations based on the country’s Aztec era.

For centuries, the villagers staged spectacular pageants in which the person portraying Christ actually had nails driven through his flesh and was lifted from the cross more dead than alive. Survivors who could show the scars of the experience became something of a local saint and legend. An Aztec ritual, still maintained in a few villages, no longer leads to death. Five centuries ago, it involved the real-life sacrifice of a young princess, burned at the stake, to become a sun goddess. The hundreds of roads leading to Calvary this year will be crowded by worshippers but the pageants have become less dangerous for the actors who play the Biblical roles.

Judgment on Jesus will be passed in each village square at high noon. The solemnfaced villagers then proceed to a hill near the village for re-enactment of the Crucifixion. There on wooden crosses,

Christ is hung between twoi [beggars. Jesus is chosen fromt the villagers, who all take I i part. )

He carries a crown of thorns and takes the falls Jesus suffered on his. way to the CrucifixionPenitents beat themselves with thorny twigs and whips made of cattle-hide, encrusted with glass fragments, that bring blood trickling from their backs. All wear hoods to conceal their identity. By 3 p.m. it is all over. The villagers mill back to their homes, wedged between horsemen in purple robes and golden helmets, who act the part of the Roman soldiers.

After the Crucifixion, Judas is burned publicly in effigy. This often leads to brawls as the effigy frequently caricatures a local

I politician or an unpopular I neighbour. | Good Friday crucifixions [are popular in Mexico, espec-

ially those in the silver mining town of Taxco, two hours drive north of the capital and at Ixtapalpa, some 24 miles to the west. At Taxco the hooded penitents at night shuffle through the streets carrying aloft thousands of candles in a spectacular ceremony. Until recently, giant figures of Judas burnt like pyres throughout Mexico City suburbs. Now this ancient custom is outlawed, but in the villages Judas still burns. Easter Saturday is the

annual "tugging of the ears” day when Mexican youngsters get their traditional pull of the ear from their parents for undiscovered sins.