Photos of a Fake Jesus Carrying a Cross Around Rio’s Slums

This article originally appeared on VICE Brazil

For the past decade, the residents of the New Holland neighborhood in the north of Rio de Janeiro have been celebrating the week leading up to Easter with a series of reenactments of scenes from the final period of Jesus's life, also called the Passion of the Christ. Following tradition, people gathered to the streets on Good Friday to watch a man portraying Jesus Christ carry a cross around the slums to the sounds of samba.

The wounds on his body might have been fake, but the symbolism they carry is still strong in the minds of catholic Brazilians, who feel the Passion of Christ bears many similarities to their nation's history.