The crowd was building when I arrived at the central park. Thousands of school girls lined the streets, wearing uniforms: white, knee-high socks, blue/green checkered skirts, white shirts, and blue vests. On a couple side streets small bands where measuring out dirges with their drums.
The local police were present in their black uniforms. Regular army soldiers stood discretely in the corners of the park.
The fireworks began at the south end of the park - not big explosions with lots of colors, just the small ones that sound like gunshots. Several hundred thousand exploded, nonstop, for the next six and a half minutes.
The parade crawled up the west street, in front of the Catholic Church. At the center of the parade, schoolgirls carried a heavy platform on their shoulders. On the platform stood a wooden statue of the Virgin Mary. She was 5 feet tall, and she wore a golden royal crown. Around her shoulders was a thick royal cape, rose red, with massive gold embroidered flowers. She held Jesus, of course. He had a halo made of gold that made him look like a tiny, pale version of the statue of liberty. The mother and child swayed back and forth, to the beat of drums, as the schoolgirls who carried them waddled forward.
The girls walked slowly over a massive sign composed of either colored dirt or sawdust. I couldn’t see what it said, but it was a golden yellow with red writing and there were lots of blues and greens too. The sign was probably 35 yards long and 10 yards wide.
The bands seemed to be competing, and the music became mushed. Behind me was an ice cream vendor who, in an attempt to attract costumers, was creating his own rhythm with a small bell.
Mary swayed past me up the hill - past the McDonalds - towards a building, 30 yards distant, which advertised a breakfast buffet every Sunday.
Behind Mary were a couple dozen people, most of them carrying umbrellas for shade. The afternoon rains hadn’t yet arrived.
Flanking the whole procession were priests in white. With them were dark indigenous women who wearing white dresses with bright golden fabric on the shoulders.
A man approached the statue with a plastic bag filled with flower petals. He tossed handfuls of petals onto Mary with the same underhanded motion that old men use when they feed bread crumbs to pigeons.
A woman walked in front of Mary wearing a beautiful Mayan dress. She had a clay pot filled with burning coals. It smelled like cedar. Waves of smoke passed over the crowd and the Madonna.
Other women are walking forward too, with lace covered bowls, which held large white candles.
After Mary passed, some of the crowd drifted away.
Suddenly the music was clear, and a song that sounded like Taps emerged. The notes slowly ascended and then descended.
Then cacophony returned, and remained as the children’s band slowly filed past. Their leader was 12 years old. She had a long wooden staff rather than a baton. She moved rhythmically, but jerkily, like a marionette. Every so often she lost the rhythm. Then she would pause and look behind her, waiting for the music to clarify a little. When the beat became clear, she would begin conducting again.
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