Color print
- Museum number:
- 13-6754
- Permalink:
- ark:/21549/hm21130006754
- Alternate number:
- 13-5889
- Accession number:
- Acc.4724
- Description:
- color photographic print; matted "A penitente, with his assistant (cirineo); Good Friday, March 24, 1978." [matted at PAHMA for exhibition]
- Donor:
- George M. Foster
- Collection place:
- Tzintzuntzan, Michoacán, Mexico
- Verbatim coll. place:
- Mexico, Michoacan, Tzintzuntzan
- Collector:
- George M. Foster
- Collection date:
- March 24, 1978
- Materials:
- Paper (fiber product)
- Object type:
- ethnography
- Object class:
- Color prints (photographs)
- Accession date:
- October 11, 2001
- Department:
- Still and motion photography
- Dimensions:
- matted— height 50.8 centimeters, matted— width 40.7 centimeters, photo— height 35.5 centimeters, and photo— width 27.9 centimeters
- Comment:
- Another religious ritual is not costly, but it can be very painful. Hooded penitents, who for untold years on Good Friday have paid their vows to the Virgin by wearing leg irons or shouldering heavy wooden crosses, have proliferated in numbers. To become a penitent is the "in" thing for young men to do. Elderly men who continue to make the penitent's rounds through the village streets are spoken of with admiration, and when they are no longer able to do so, they are still praised for their religious devotion. For many years penitents were few in number; a single cross sufficed. By 1965 there were three. When, in 1978, I was in Tzintzuntzan for Easter Week for the first time in some years, I was dumbfounded to find that the number had risen to 11, which were in constant use all Good Friday night, until well after dawn the following morning. Well over 100 penitents "paid" their vow that night-at the same time acquiring status and prestige (1979).