Monthly Article

The Lord of the Earthquakes: Holy Week in Cusco
21 April 2006

By Stephen Light

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.