“My Place Is to Be Along with Mary, not Jesus”. Space Relations and Gender Construction During the Holy Week in Guatemala City

Abstract

This article displays some thoughts related to my ongoing research on the construction of gender subjectivities in urban religious spaces in Guatemala City. My analysis is based upon the fieldwork I conducted in 2017 during the Holy Week festivities and the follow-up interviews in the aftermath of the Holy Week and beyond. In what follows, I will analyze on one hand, the ways gender shapes and is shaped by processions, understood as a space of subjectivation, where multiple actors share a common space. On the other hand, getting to know the diversity of everyday experiences as well as individual and collective pathways, allowed me to explore how these actors, as gendered subjects, represent, produce, transgress and get to experience normative gendered borders.