In a town of less than one square mile wedged between Tempe and Phoenix along Interstate 10, one of the Valley’s most significant living ceremonies plays out every spring. During Lent and Holy Week the Yaqui community of Guadalupe holds its ceremonies at the Yaqui Temple and the ceremonial ground beside it, and it opens parts of them to the public. Visitors are welcome on the community’s terms. This note is about those terms. It is deliberately short on description, because the community asks visitors not to record what they see, and a written play-by-play is a recording by other means.
What it is
The Yaqui, who call themselves Yoeme, came north from their homeland on the Río Yaqui in Sonora around the turn of the twentieth century, fleeing war and persecution. The Town of Guadalupe describes itself as founded by the Yaqui around that time and named for the Virgin of Guadalupe; it incorporated in 1975.
The Yaquis adopted Catholicism early in the colonial era, and their Lenten and Easter ceremonies grew out of that period. KJZZ, interviewing Juan Tavena, a captain in Guadalupe’s Lenten Society and one of the ceremonies’ organizers, in 2022, dated the tradition to the early 1600s in Mexico. The dances, instruments, masks and costumes all belong to it. So does the arrangement that brings you there: the community chooses which parts to open to the public, and asks visitors to respect its wishes while they watch.
The rules
These are the community’s rules, as published to visitors. They are not suggestions.
- No photographs. Not with a camera, not with a phone, not “just one from the back.”
- No recording. No video, and no audio either.
- No sketching or drawing. This rule surprises people. It is the same rule as the others.
- Phones away. If you cannot keep yours in your pocket all evening, leave it in the car.
- No alcohol at the ceremonial sites.
Two notes on why. First, the ceremonies are an act of faith by a community, not a show staged for an audience. Second, the rule covers everyone. A telephoto lens from across the street, a drone, or a “quick video for my mom” is the same violation as a tripod in the plaza.
When
The ceremonies follow the church calendar, so the dates move every year.
- Lent: the public portions begin on the Fridays of Lent, typically in the late afternoon or evening.
- Holy Week: Palm Sunday weekend, then the Easter weekend, building through Holy Saturday to Easter Sunday morning, which visitor listings have described as beginning early and running to about midday.
For 2027, Ash Wednesday falls on February 10, Palm Sunday on March 21 and Easter Sunday on March 28. Those are calendar dates, not a schedule. Visitor listings have published specific start times for each day, but they change, and we could not find a schedule the community itself posts online, so we are not repeating them as fixed. Confirm each year before you go. Visitor guides have listed 480-505-5366 as the number for ceremony information; if that does not answer, Guadalupe Town Hall, 9241 S. Avenida del Yaqui, is at 480-730-3080.
Where
The Yaqui Temple and its ceremonial ground are on Avenida del Yaqui, between San Angelo and Calle Iglesia, in the center of Guadalupe. It is a residential town. Park legally, keep driveways clear, do not block side streets, and expect to walk.
How to behave once you are there
Beyond the posted rules, this is our advice, from the ordinary manners of being a guest at someone else’s worship:
- Stand where you are directed. If community members ask you to move back or make way for a procession, do it at once and without comment.
- Stay off the ceremonial ground unless you are invited onto it, and never cut through a procession to reach a better spot.
- Keep it quiet. Talk low and save the questions for later. Do not ask participants to explain what they are doing, and do not ask to touch anything.
- Bring children who can handle it, keep them close, and leave if they cannot.
- Leave the dog at home.
- Do not narrate it online afterward. No live posts, no detailed write-up, no “here’s what it means.” If you want to share something, share that you went and that it was worth going.
The Scottsdale connection
Yaqui history in this Valley is not only Guadalupe’s. Yaqui families came to Scottsdale by the 1920s to dig and maintain the canals, helped make the bricks for the Old Adobe Mission, and since 1972 have lived in Penjamo, a small neighborhood of four cul-de-sacs in south Scottsdale. Their story is on our Yaqui families of Scottsdale page.
The way to see Yaqui ceremonial figures in Scottsdale is the right way: in a work made by a Yaqui artist for his own community. Mario Martinez’s 1999 Yaqui Mural at the Vista del Camino Community Center, in Vista del Camino Park at 7700 E. Roosevelt Street, includes panels of a Deer Dancer and a Pascola dancer. Look at it before or after Easter and you will understand more than any photograph from Guadalupe could tell you. It is a public mural on a public building; the homes beside it are private.
Before you go, read
- KJZZ, “How the Pascua Yaqui in Guadalupe celebrate Easter with a 400-year-old tradition” (April 15, 2022), the interview with Juan Tavena.
- Muriel Thayer Painter, With Good Heart: Yaqui Beliefs and Ceremonies in Pascua Village (University of Arizona Press, 1986), free in the press’s open-access collection. Painter observed for four decades, and the manuscript was reviewed by a Yaqui committee before publication. It is about Pascua Village in Tucson, not Guadalupe, and it is background, not a guidebook.
Then go, keep your phone in your pocket, and let the morning be what it is for the people whose ceremony it is.