40 Die in Crush of Pilgrims Honoring Ash Wednesday : Religion: Some report pushing among the visitors to a Mexican town; others blame an attempted robbery.

At least 40 Indian pilgrims, most of them elderly women and children, were trampled to death in a crush of worshipers headed through a narrow marketplace to church for this town’s Ash Wednesday celebration.

Another 35 people were injured in the crowd of thousands, which panicked for reasons that authorities did not clearly understand. Emergency workers said some people reported that the market grew too crowded in the early morning and that pilgrims at the back began to push; others told them that the melee may have been provoked by hoodlums trying to rob the worshipers.

“Something happened at the back of the crowd that set off the avalanche of people,” said Eladio Briano Guerrero, one of the first paramedics on the scene. “Some of the people fell and others just ran over them.”

Candida Arenillas, 51, was leaving the colonial church shortly before 8 a.m. when pandemonium broke out among the masses bearing flowers, incense and images of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

“We were leaving the church and suddenly someone yelled: ‘Go back, go back!’ ” Arenillas said through tears. “All around me people were pushing. I held a little boy over my head and felt the blows on my back. By my side was the little girl and mother who had come with us, but suddenly the mother disappeared. Now, she’s over there with the dead.”

Most of the 37 victims who had been identified were gray-haired and barefoot women laid out in a schoolyard under the worn shawls and towels they had brought to protect their heads from the mountain sun. Names written on sheets of notebook paper were taped to their chests beneath their crosses. Eight of the dead were children.

Officials said family members had carried away three to six more dead, including a young couple and child, before they could be identified.

Most of the dead fell in front of the stall of Telesforo Onofre.

“It all happened so fast,” said the vendor, fingering his rosary beads. Broken candles and shards of plaster and glass from broken baby Jesus figurines littered the ground. “We tried to pull people out but we couldn’t do anything.”

After the tragedy, Gov. Ignacio Pichardo Pagaza gave orders for a second street to be constructed to the hilltop sanctuary.

Chalma, about 35 miles southwest of Mexico City, is famous for its gold-trimmed church and the Father of Chalma replica of Christ that is said to perform miracles. Every year on Ash Wednesday, thousands of pilgrims come from surrounding states by bus, foot and bicycle to attend Mass and a fiesta of song and dance.

Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, the 40-day period of penance that ends the day before Easter. Townsfolk murmured that a similar tragedy had befallen Chalma about 30 years ago, killing 17 people, but no one could remember exactly when or what happened then.

The two-lane mountain road into town was clogged with pickup trucks and buses decorated with gladiolas. Cyclists peddled uphill with altars balanced on their handlebars. In the market, vendors sold three-dimensional portraits of Christ and charms in the shape of arms and legs for those who need medical attention to their limbs.

Arenillas, a native of Puebla who lives in New York, said she visits Chalma every time she comes back to Mexico. “I believe the Father of Chalma is special. He makes miracles,” she said, recalling that she accompanied her mother to the church as a child and saw her cured of a fever.

Dionisia Rojas, who lost her 80-year-old uncle in the stampede, said she makes the pilgrimage from Tlaxcala state each year because she has “faith in the Father of Chalma.”

After the accident, soldiers and police controlled traffic into the music-filled church courtyard, but worshipers continued to pour in as if nothing had happened.