Easter

I was sitting in my apartment watching football and piddling around on the internet when I heard the distant sound of drum beats. I was kind of excited because it was Semana Santa, and I'd heard that the Easter processions here are particularly dark and interesting. I looked out my window and at the end of my street, a group of people dressed in black KKK uniforms were forming a group (obviously these hooded costumes didn't originate with the KKK, but they're impossible to disassociate). They began walking down my street. I was home alone and terrified. But I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures out on my balcony.

There was a section of drummers keeping a "beat" for the rest of the hooded marchers who were walking as slow as humanly possible down my street (the drummers were also wearing hoods of course). The drums were enormous, and some of the marchers were using mallets. With my balcony view, I noticed circles of red on some of the drums. Indeed, the more devout (I suppose) were using their bare knuckles to beat the drums and had formed circles of blood about the size of a human head on theirs.

With the parade right out front, I saw my friend Kelly down on the street and decided to go down, and we took some more photos. About a quarter of the marchers were children, which was weird to see. The procession would stop periodically and some of the children would lift their hoods and smile for a picture or wave at their parents.