Each pueblo around lago Atitlan is different, with distinct municipalidads and community traditions. San Juan la Laguna is one of the most organized of the pueblos, with women's weaving collectives and coffee and construction collectives. They are also pioneering in the renaissance of using natural dye in Maya weaving. The walls of their town and boast an extensive collection of murals, most featuring Maya images and traditions. Despite it's relatively small population-- around 5000 mostly Tzutujil Maya people, the scope and creativity of San Juan's alfombras. were spectacular.
The pre-hispanic Mayans made carpets of flowers and pine needles for their sacred processions. In the 1500s, the Spanish Catholic church, in addition to vigorously converting the Maya, introduced the Spanish use of colored sawdust for creating street carpets especially for holy week, over which the statues of Jesus, Mary and the town’s saint would be paraded.
These elaborate temporary carpets or alfombras, continuously line the route that the procession will take. In Guatemala these are called Aserrin de Alfombra, or “carpet of sawdust” or simply alfombras, to include the traditional alfombra which uses seeds, plants, and carefully separated parts from trees and flowers to create designs. These are constructed on Thursday or Friday of holy week and will pave the way for the processions. Though the lifespan of an alfombra is a matter of hours, they are the culmination of weeks and even months of creating new designs, carving stencils from cardboard, hand-dying sawdust to achieve the colors, collecting natural materials for alfombras and hours of communal labor before the procession. Each group pays for its own supplies and most begin collecting quetzals in February to cover the cost. The collaborators are family, neighbors, friends, or organizations, together focused on creating a work of art worthy of the divine.
Louise "Luisa" Wisechild, PhD
I first visited Guatemala in 1995 as a member of the Vashon Island sister city delgation to Santiago de Atitlan, Guatemala.