The most moving and public part of Cusco’s Easter Week
celebrations takes place on the Monday before Good Friday, when the region’s
most important religious symbol, the Lord of the Earthquakes, is taken from the cathedral
and carried through the streets. Also known as the Dark Christ, this dark-skinned,
life-sized image of the crucifixion is borne through Cusco’s historic centre on
a massive silver pedestal. The procession culminates in an emotional farewell from the
multitude gathered in the Plaza de Armas, as the figure of Christ returns to the cathedral
to the deafening accompaniment of the sirens of the fire trucks of the local volunteer
fire department.
Thousands of pilgrims flock to Cusco for Holy Week, many arriving on foot from the
region’s remotest villages. While many come to attend the Quechua mass celebrated
before dawn on Easter Monday, and others to feast on the traditional dishes made and
served in the streets around the main square, most come to see the procession of El
Señor de los Temblores.
To the mournful accompaniment of María Angola, the five-ton cathedral bell,
the Lord of the Earthquakes is taken from the basilica. Also known as the Cristo
Moreno, this dark-skinned, life-sized crucifix is carried through the streets on
a massive silver litter borne on the shoulders of the faithful. The figure, covered
in gold and jewels, leaves the cathedral at around four in the afternoon on Easter
Monday, and is carried around the main plaza, along Portal de Panes and Calle
Plateros, to the church of Santa Teresa. From there, via Calle Heladeros, La Merced
and Mantas, it is returned to the Plaza de Armas.
The image of Christ is accompanied on its three hour procession by the city’s
civil and military leaders, the heads of private and public institutions, religious
orders, native varayocs (village elders) and ordinary pilgrims. All along the route,
the balconies of houses are hung with baskets of the red flowers known in Quechua
as ñuqchu, with which local families shower the Christ figure as it passes.
At around seven o’clock, as the procession nears the plaza, tens of thousands
of people converge on the square via the ten streets which lead to it, to bid a
hushed, emotional farewell to the dark Christ as it is returned its resting place
in the cathedral.
The Cusco Earthquake of March 31st, 1650
“Cusco, quien te vio ayer,
y te ve ahora,
cómo no llora?”
Gil González Dávila, eyewitness to the 1650 earthquake
(“Cusco, how can he who saw you yesterday, and who sees you today, not be
moved to tears?”)
Until the city was shaken by a massive tremor in 1986, it was said in Cusco that
major earthquakes only occurred here once every three hundred years.
Legend has it that early in the reign of the Inca Cusi Yupanqui, the successor
to Viracocha, a great earthquake destroyed much of the city and affected the
entire region. The young ruler decided to reconstruct the city as a great
imperial capital adorned with fine religious buildings and palaces built to
withstand tremors, and from then on he was known as the “Earth Changer”,
or Pachacutec, in Quechua.
That earthquake probably occurred in the mid-14th century. The next two major
quakes to devastate Cusco came on March 31st 1650 and May 21st 1950.
The veneration of the Lord of the Earthquakes, also known as Taytacha Temblores,
dates from 1650. It is said that only when this effigy of Christ, which had been
donated to the city by Carlos V of Spain a century before, was taken into the
streets did the series of shocks which destroyed much of Cusco cease.
The cathedral itself was hardly damaged, and the city’s Inca stonework
survived intact. But the houses of the Spanish, along with the churches of
Santo Domingo, San Agustín, La Companía, La Merced and Belén,
were utterly destroyed. |