maxwell briceño

Every Holy Week, the steep streets of Petare - Venezuela's largest neighborhood - become the stage for one of the most powerful popular manifestations in Caracas: the Living Stations of the Cross, organized by young actors, neighbors and religious leaders for the past 39 years.This photo gallery is a visual journey through this ritual, where the body, faith and urban reality intersect. From the moments of preparation, in humble homes or behind curtains, to the scenes charged with drama at the foot of the cross, the images reveal an intensity that transcends the religious.Christ falls on the pavement of Petare. Women cry in the corner. Soldiers watch from a terrace. Everything happens under the sun, among electrical wires, graffitied walls and crowds that accompany in silence or in tears. The performance does not take place in a theater, but in the street, in the neighborhood, among the people.The climax arrives at the top, where the three crosses rise against the Caracas sky, with the hill and the clouds as a backdrop. There, the Viacrucis not only represents the death of Jesus, but the symbolic strength of a community that refuses to forget its rites, its history and its capacity to build beauty in the midst of adversity.This photographic essay seeks to record not only the tradition, but also the emotion, the effort and the collective power that sustain this act year after year. A faith that is incarnated. An act of resistance. A neighborhood that walks with its cross.