The Penitent Brotherhood, a deeply religious and charitable organization, performs in New Mexico annually at Easter a ritual nearly identical with the primitive Passion Play of the Old World of 400 years ago, writes Alice Corbin Henderson in "Brothers of Light." These ceremonies are not performed for an audience, but for the participants, to whom the spirit of the penance and the parable of the Crucifixion are personal and profound. But if you are courteously inclined, you may be permitted to witness this moving Calvary. Much of it indeed takes place in the open countryside. We saw our first Penitente ritual at Abiquiu, a bare, austere village of brown earth houses, with tiny whitewashed courtyards, facing the distant Sangre de Cristo range. It was on Wednesday of Holy Week. Dusk was falling as we left our car and climbed toward the Morada, the adobe chapel of the Penitente Brotherhood. Above the quiet of the hills came the sound of chanting Voices, the monotonous rise and fall of a sad Miserere, and the plaintive note of a wooden pite, or flute. Suddenly we saw them, a staggering line of black-cowled, half-nude figures, their naked backs stained a deep crimson from the blows of their yucca whips. The process sion was led by a black-robed Hermano Mayor, Chief Brother, murmuring over his crucifix; the Rezadar, carrying an aged hand written copybook; and the Pitero with his flute. After them came five cross-bearers, the timber of heavy crosses dragging crunchingly over the ground.
A crude death cart—Carreta del Muerto—followed, drawn by a penitent, the rope cutting into his naked bleeding shoulders and armpits. On the wooden vehicle, much like a peasant oxcart with solid wheels, sat Death, a carved figure clothed in black, whose obsidian eyes glared uncannily from its chalk-white face in the half light of a rising moon, The image was gruesomely lifelike, perhaps because underneath those black robes were meticulously carved shoulders and hips beautifully molded like living flesh. In its hands, Death held high a drawn bow, with arrow stretched for flight. Once, tradition says, the figure let fly the arrow from his bow to kill a mocking bystander.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.