In 1998 I traveled to Guatemala for All Souls Day. I was on a two week excursion to visit weavers of the traditional styles. Guatemala has over 70 native languages spoken among its different villages, and each village has its signature weaving style as well.
We traveled in remote mountain villages into dirt floor homes, each with a hearth and a back strap loom. We crossed pristine lakes, and skirted old volcanoes ribboned with rows of corn. The streets of towns were lined with houses painted in a carnival of colors, and fields of autumn flowers spread into every valley.
While we were there a great hurricane formed in the Gulf of Mexico. Mitch grew to an enormously destructive force before it made landfall in Honduras. It is remembered as the second most deadly storm on record, with 11,000 fatalities, 36 inches of rain, and 180 mph winds. It spilled over the mountains into Guatemala, closing roads and flooding villages.
In Chichicastenango we visited a Catholic church built upon a Mayan temple, now divided in half, where both traditions were being practiced. The Priests blessed and cleansed the spirits of the villagers under the same roof as the Jesuits performed baptisms. Elsewhere, in the temple of Máximon, the walls were lined with testaments of his gifts to blessed petitioners.
On the eve of All Souls Day villagers decorate the graves of their ancestors with marigolds and gifts of food and earthly comforts. The grave sites have niches built into them for the offerings, with candles to illuminate their loved one’s return.
In one small village the storm’s constant rain had pushed the river out of its banks and it began to pour into the town. Over night it had followed a dirt byway and then abruptly detoured into the cemetery. It had left in its wake a canal of destruction. Where graves had been the day before, a roiling, muddy ditch was now. All the candles and offerings were washed away with the storm.
But when dawn arrived the villagers poured out with the sun. Brightly dressed, each walked to the cemetery, where their grandfathers and grandmothers had laid the day before and quietly began fashioning bridges from the toppled headstones.
Under threat of more rain, young and old made a pathway to the highest point on the hill. All day a steady stream of people crossed the new brook and bridges to fly handmade kites in the storm.
Beautiful, delicately colored kites tossed and turned in the wind over graves, welcoming home the spirits of their departed, releasing the suffering of this world, celebrating the promise of another. Content to be one again, satisfied that this day had brought them closer to their own, into full circle with the river, and the insistent rain.
As love letters spun and twisted with the wind, the clouds began to break, and a new stream carried marigolds to the sea.
Image courtesy of Harper Poe, www.proudmary.org, Text Copyright 2014 Harry D. Hudson
