Passion Play, Ajijic, Mexico

Our little village of Ajijic has only about 15,000 people (in high season) but each year, as in many villages, they have the Passion Play. We finally got to go this year and were amazed at the quality of the production. All actors are amateurs. However, the Passion Play is only one part of the entire Easter celebration. Go to this website to get the full set of activities. They reenact many parts of the Easter story over the course of the week. We figure in the next few years we will go to some of the other activities, like following Jesus up the mountain, as he carries the cross on His back to be crucified. We should point out also that in the scenes in Pilate's palace, the golden statues are actors painted gold who then stand in the heat for the duration. By the way, it was amazing to watch how they changed the sets between scenes, a very interesting production.

We found the Passion Play (in Spanish of course) to be very realistic and served as an excellent reminder of God's great gift to mankind, that of stepping on Earth as the man Jesus and then dying on the cross as payment for our sins and then rising again the third day victorious over death and the grave. When we saw the actor being flogged by the Romans we were reminded of something a local pastor said, "only an arrogant fool would reject the great gift of love from God". Sobering thought.

We recorded most of the passion play, and the following links will take you through them. The first video is just a quick view of the stage and the crowd gathering in front of the village church. The Passion Play begins with the Jews bringing Jesus before Pilate as shown in this video clip. The scene then moves on to Jesus brought before Herod. When Jesus stood without saying a word to Herod it was like He was thinking "Would you hurry, I am about My Father's Business and about to launch the most important event in all of history!" In the next scene Jesus is brought before Pilate once more. Now, in the next scene, Jesus is mocked and flogged in front of all the Jews. Apparently there have been times when there was real blood from the flogging as the actors doing the flogging got carried away. This is very realistic! The scene changes again to Pilate's palace where Pilate washes his hands of this whole incident, hands Jesus over to the Jews and Jesus begins the procession to be crucified. Note that the actor is really dragging a very heavy cross. He will go up the main street of Ajijic and up the mountain where there are twelve stations of the cross. He only gets relief when Simon the Cyrene takes the cross from Jesus. This actor then drags it the rest of the way up the mountain. Here is the crowd that followed Jesus on their way to main street Ajijic and up the mountain. Just as an aside, one of these characters is an effigy of Judas Iscariot that is to be burned later on.

Next year, hopefully, we will get more of the other events taking place.