Procissão do Fogaréu in Goiás Velho

Goiás Velho, a colonial town in Goiás whose downtown area is a Unesco World Heritage Site, has hosted Procissão do Fogaréu (or Procession of the Torches) every Holy Week (Semana Santa) for over 200 years.

The procession is a dramatic reenactment of Christ's arrest in the Olive Garden featuring farricocos - men in robes and hoods carrying torches - in lieu of soldiers.

Other towns in Brazil have their own version of Procissão do Fogaréu, but the event in Goiás Velho, aka Vila Boa de Goiás, is the only one in Brazil with farricocos, inspired in Spanish Semana Santa rituals.

Between 10,000 and 15,000 attend each year.

As Holy Thursday starts, street lights in downtown Goiás Velho are turned off. Forty farricocos gather in front of Igreja (Church) da Boa Morte, torches in hand. Followed by thousands of people, some also carrying torches, they rush to de Nossa Senhora do Rosário, representing the Cenacle, and find out Jesus and his apostles have dispersed.

The arrest takes place at Igreja São Francisco de Paula. A farricoco carries an image of Christ, a replica of a banner by nineteenth-century Goiás Velho artist Veiga Valle. The bishop delivers his homily and the procession returns to its point of origin.

According to information compiled in Vila Boa de Goiás.com.br, the music in latin sung by a choir at key moments of the procession was written by local composer Basílio Serradourada.

Procissão do Fogaréu was introduced in Goiás Velho by Spanish priest Perestelo de Vasconcelos Espindola in the mid-eighteenth century. For years, continuity of the tradition has been assured by Organização Vilaboense de Artes e Tradições (Ovat), a cultural and historical society founded in 1965. Ovat is responsible for a revival of Procissão do Fogaréu, which had been dormant during part of the nineteenth century.

Members of Ovat quoted in an article by journalist Mauricio Monteiro Filho say that until the 1950s, women and children were forbidden from watching the procession due to superstition - a fear of the devil.

A different approach to Procissão do Fogaréu takes place in Paraty, where there are no farricocos and all the faithful who want to participate carry torches as they weave in and out of the many churches in the preserved colonial downtown area.

In 2007, the online version of Jornal Pequeno, a newspaper from São Luís, capital of Maranhão, reported a growing interest in Procissão do Fogaréu in Caxias, a town in Maranhão with about 150,000 inhabitants, known for its nineteenth-century architecture. The procession in Caxias is a new tradition, initiated in 2004 and inspired both in the older processions and in the in Nova Jerusalém, Pernambuco. The newspaper also mentions Nazaré da Mata, in Pernambuco, and Oeiras, in Piauí, as towns that host versions of the event.

• Photos by Helio Rocha
• Photos by Milene Fernandes
• Photos on VilaBoadeGoiás.com.br