To spark the holiday season, Guatemalans roast an effigy of the devil. I wrote about the spectacle for American Way, the inflight magazine of American Airlines. Here’s how the story starts:
The flames rise 30 feet into the air, casting a lurid glow on spectators’ faces. The burning effigy gives off a villainous stench, its acrid smoke engulfing the plaza. Bomberos (firefighters) watch nervously as thousands of Guatemalans howl and rejoice, stamping their feet and jumping into the air to get a better view of the demise of el diablo.
Sparks drift toward the Esso station nearby; the conflagration illuminates a sign above the pumps that reads “No fumar.” It’s classic Guatemala: You can’t smoke, but you can soak a papier-mâché demon with gas and light it on fire.
Guatemala’s Burning of the Devil Marks Triumph of Good over Evil
By Michael Shapiro
The flames rise 30 feet into the air, casting a lurid glow on spectators’ faces. The burning effigy gives off a villainous stench, its acrid smoke engulfing the plaza. Bomberos (firefighters) watch nervously as more than a thousand Guatemalans howl and rejoice, stamping their feet and jumping into the air to get a better view of the demise of el diablo.
Sparks drift towards the Esso station nearby; the conflagration illuminates a sign above the pumps that reads “No fumar.” It’s classic Guatemala: you can’t smoke, but you can soak a papier-mache demon with gas and light him on fire.
The annual Burning of the Devil in the colonial village of La Antigua Guatemala begins with crowds pushing towards a charismatic figure in the center of the Barrio de la Concepción. Towering above the expectant crowd is a scarlet demon, whose wings suggest a fallen angel. On one side of the plaza is the church of La Concepción, on the other a pair of gas stations. The glowering horned effigy, fearsome with its fangs and pointed tail, is doused with gasoline at dusk.
Around the plaza vendors hawk colorful balloons, foil pinwheels, plastic devil horns and orbs of cotton candy. Some of the spectators are indigenous Maya, dressed in brightly colored huipiles, blouses whose patterns reveal where their owners are from. Strips of beef sizzle on food-cart grills; the pungent scent of seared flesh hangs heavily in the air.
The crowd hurls insults at the devil. “Feo, es feo!” (Ugly, he’s ugly!) shouts a girl near me. A boy spits on el diablo and dismissively tosses wads of paper trash at him.
The devil’s “will” is read: he leaves his greed to a wealthy local merchant, his manipulative skills to a prominent local politician, drawing hoots and guffaws from the crowd. Officials are rarely named, says Rudy Girón, an Antigua resident and editor of AntiguaDailyPhoto.com, but everyone knows who the devil is talking about. “It’s humor-double-meaning speech making sure people know who’s being criticized without actually calling any names,” he says.
As the hour of six – the satanic number – approaches, the plaza and roads that lead into it become so packed it’s hard to take a deep breath. A marimba and brass band plays a mournful dirge – firefighters stand with hoses pointing at el diablo. Suddenly a chain of firecrackers explodes sounding like machine-gun bullets piercing the night. “Hay mas! Hay mas!” (There are more!), shouts an excited borracho (drunkard), eagerly anticipating the next volley.
At precisely 6 p.m., well, as precise as you can get in Central America, the exultant crowd counts down: cinco, cuatro, tres, dos, uno! A torch-bearer approaches the gas-soaked, 12-foot-high devil and sets the demon ablaze. Satan sizzles and crackles, his three-pronged pitchfork becomes engulfed in orange, green and blue flames.
As the devil burns he pops and crumples, his pitchfork sags; the figure is ultimately reduced to simmering embers. Spectators bellow and cheer, a young man thrusts his fist into the air. A brass band breaks into a thumping number as the bomberos blast the devil with arcs of water. The firefighters don’t just extinguish the devil, they douse front-row spectators whose shrieks seem to give a last gasp of voice to the vanquished evil one.
The Quema del Diablo, as it’s called in Guatemala, marks the triumph of good over evil and is the unofficial beginning of the Christmas holiday season. It ignites almost a month of Christmas festivities and processions. “It’s a celebration which brings people together and charges them with good vibes prior to the beginning of the Christmas season,” Girón says.
The annual Quema in Antigua is the largest and best known, but the ritual is celebrated throughout much of central Guatemala at dusk on Dec. 7. People clean out their homes, pile up their trash and burn it, the fires symbolizing purification and freedom from the forces of evil. The message: the devil may wreak havoc all year long, but December belongs to the saints.
“The first time I saw the burning was quiet emotional,” says Elizabeth Bell, who has lived in Antigua for 40 years and is author of Antigua Guatemala: The city and its heritage. “There was a huge gust of wind that came right after the fire. It seemed the devil had left.”
The devil burning isn’t well known outside Guatemala – far more visitors attend Antigua’s Semana Santa procession that marks Easter Holy Week in early spring. But the Quema is emblematic of the Guatemalan spirit and its mixing of ancient Mayan beliefs and Catholic religious practices. Like Mayan festivals, it is loud, boisterous and jubilant, with firecrackers and marimba music. In true Christian form, it demonstrates that good can trump evil and that no matter how bad things get, there’s always hope for redemption.
The tradition began in the Colonial era, when wealthy families set lanterns in front of their homes on the eve of the Feast of Immaculate Conception. Too poor to buy lanterns, those of lesser means gathered sticks and trash from their homes to build bonfires.
Though the Burning of the Devil celebration is wildly popular, there’s growing concern about pollution and toxic fumes. Beyond Antigua, some celebrate La Quema del Diablo by incinerating trash, including plastic and sometimes a tire, in front their houses. Because of the ecological impact, Girón says, some want to banish the Quema. In response, today many families torch only a piñata of the devil, after it’s battered and emptied of its candy by stick-wielding kids. Girón says he favors this approach.
Historian Celso A. Lara Figueroa dismisses pollution concerns. “No one” he told the Guatemalan magazine Revue, “can claim to have the right to put an end to [our] traditions.”
It’s not surprising that Antigua’s residents want to expunge their demons. At the foot of three volcanoes, this colonial town has been bedeviled by natural disasters and other calamities throughout its almost-500-year history.
Founded in 1543 by conquistadors after a volcanic eruption destroyed neighboring Ciudad Vieja, Antigua served as the Spanish capital of Central America for more than two centuries, until the 1770s. In 1773 a thundering earthquake destroyed much of Antigua, burying some citizens under mounds of rubble. Two years later the capital moved to present-day Guatemala City. Today, on almost every street in the one-mile-square town of Antigua, you can see the ruins of colonial churches or other buildings that collapsed in that quake.
Fuego Volcano, simmering in the distance, remains active, puffing out plumes of smoke with occasional eruptions of ash and lava. But fortunately for Antigua, Fuego is too far away, scientists say, to threaten the town.
Back at the Barrio de la Concepción, elated revelers file out of the plaza, sodden ashes from the once menacing diablo clinging to their clothes. Around this colonial village and beyond, little bonfires and piñatas are fading to black. This ritual of purification has banished the devil and the evil he incarnates, clearing the way for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and the Christmas ceremonies to follow.
And on this night, a beautiful land that’s often been disrupted by natural cataclysms and internal strife, knows the sweet contentment of peace.
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Bio: Michael Shapiro is co-author of Guatemala: A Journey Through the Land of the Maya with photographer Kraig Lieb.
