The Lord of Miracles

October is the month of the Lord of Miracles, the biggest devotional celebration I've seen here. Churches are decked in purple all month, and processions go out from tons of parishes, including the Cathedral of Lima, carrying the image of the Lord of Miracles. The story of the devotion goes like this:

In the 17th century, when slavery still existed in Peru, an African slave painted an image of the crucified Christ in Lima. It was called the Cristo de Pachacamía, Pachacamía being a place where slaves were bought and sold in the city. Tons of slaves went to this image to pray and call on God for help in their suffering. In the image of the crucified Jesus they found a God who understood the hell they were living and who could be there with them in all the ways they were dying every day. Eventually the devotion grew so popular that the local authorities considered it dangerous and ordered the image removed from the church where it hung in Lima. But when they tried to remove the image, an earthquake shook the city and destroyed the church, the surroundings, everything--except the wall on which the image hung. (The painting did in fact survive an earthquake in the 17th century.) For those who stop to think about the reason for the processions, therefore, the idea is that God intervened through a miracle to keep this image of herself present to the oppressed people of Lima, as a way to say, I am with you in your sufferings and I hear you when you cry out.


The festival itself, though, becomes something like Christmas in the US in that people gather for the pomp and ceremony of the processions themselves, and if you asked them why, would probably say, "It's the Lord of Miracles!". There are whole societies of devotees to the Lord of Miracles who dress in purple robes to carry the image around the city. In the center of Lima hundreds of thousands of people come to see the original painting get paraded around; in our neighborhood, probably several hundred came and went during the six-hour course of the procession. The image is mounted on a big wooden platform like an altar that has four wooden arms sticking out from the corners, two front and two back, and decorated with gorgeous flowers, balloons, lights, everything. It takes twelve people to lift the thing and carry it around. Three people get under each bar, which when the anda rests on the ground is about at elbow height, and the guy in charge hits a bell on the front and says, "Ready!" -- Ding! -- "Arriba!" and the twelve people stand up under the huge weight. Everyone applauds because this takes considerable effort. Once it's balanced on their shoulders they begin to sway back and forth, right, left, and with each sway they take a little step forward. And thus the Lord of Miracles advances slowly out of the church and down the street. There's a brass band walking behind him and when people see the procession, they come to walk along for a while and then go on their way. Every hundred meters, or about 20 minutes, the carriers put the anda down and a new group takes over.

Along with a couple of friends from the parish, I managed to get myself on the committee that organized this event. I'd never seen a real Latin American-style religious procession and I thought it'd be cool to see one from the inside, so to speak. Thanks to several colorful personalities, the organizational meeting was a 2.5-hour argument / complaint session about why things didn't work last year and what the president of the committee had to do about it. (Don't get me started on the Peruvian tendency to back off from committment, or to commit to something and then not show up, but then come back later and angrily criticize the work of the one or two people who have actually take any responsibility for getting whatever it is done.) But I did discover the kinds of things one has to think about in order to have a procession. The whole route has to be marked beforehand, at night, with stops every 100 meters where the carriers will switch off. At these stops the people often gather their religious pictures, rosaries, etc and arrange them on tables with flowers, making a nice sort of image for the anda to stop in front of for prayers and blessings. Sometimes the anda actually makes a little bow to these gatherings of people and items--the carriers in front stoop down and then stand straight again at the sound of the bell, very difficult to do, and everyone applauds. People also take advantage of the stops to bring their babies up to the anda so that the guy in charge can lift the baby up-down-left-right in the sign of the cross in front of the Lord of Miracles. This was funny when the director, Martín, was all stressing out about the time and moving the procession along and they kept passing him baby after baby.

Before the day of the procession you have to put out flyers to all the houses it's going to pass by, so they can be ready. We drafted the church choir to do this one night and the whole group of us ran up and down the neighborhood in the dark, walking in pairs and scurrying quickly past the unlighted sections, slipping papers under people's doors. Then somebody has to think about who's going to carry the thing and have refreshments available for the carriers when they finish; call the band and make sure they will actually show up (the first shift didn't, the second did); invite the mayor, the local functionaries, etc, none of whom actually come; argue with the committee president about why the priest says he can't say a Mass beforehand and yell at him to convince the priest to do so, etc. My job, supposedly, was to sign people up in groups to take turns as carriers. It was complete chaos because I was running around in the crowd looking for people of about the same height and asking them to take a turn, except there was no way I could remember the faces of group after group of twelve strangers dispersed throughout the crowd, much less tell each one when it was their turn, and they didn't all step forward when the lady with the megaphone took a break from the songs and Rosaries to call them. So Martín, the guy running the whole thing, was yelling at me to come up with people to carry and I had no idea where the other five people I'd asked had gone, and we ended up sort of shouting for volunteers each time the anda stopped. I was so stressed and begging my friends to help me, until Eymi told me, Relax, Kata, there's never any carriers. Every year we end up doing this.--It would have been real nice if somebody had told me that before. As usual my expectations were for everything we planned to actually function the way we planned it, thus stressing me out when this did not happen... but the Peruvians knew better. My mistake.

By the time it got dark I'd decided to resign myself to the chaos, ignore Martín's yelling (he's just one of those people who likes to yell), and enjoy the whole plodding, sprawling, noisy, glorious shebang. A few more of my friends showed up and in a spur-of-the-moment decision, once more lacking people to make up the next group of twelve, I jumped in with them to take a turn carrying. Finally I was out from under Martín's yelling and just had to listen for the bell, stand up!--shift the weight, balance it--steady!--and then just think about walking, swaying, right, left, pulling forward and trying to stand straight under the swaying weight of the anda on my shoulder. I was right in front on the same bar as my friends Victor and Alfredo (our girl friends took a turn later but very few Peruvian women are my size, so our group was mixed). It's really, really important for the three people on a bar to be the same height, because if not, the taller person can't stand up under the weight and it's painful for everybody. I think this may have been the case for me because I had a cramp in my back after about 10 minutes, when we switched sides to change shoulders. After my 20 minutes were up I stepped out gladly, feeling almost like I'd been swimming because the exhilerating tiredness of hard exercise was not in my arms or shoulders but in my whole body.

After this experience I was utterly astounded to see that about eight women from the community--all moms in their thirties or forties and all exactly the same height, 5 foot 0--jumped in to carry when a group of shorter people took over towards the end, and didn't leave for the next hour until the anda reached the church again. We kept asking them if they wanted relief and they said, No, no, we do this every year! We're good! Their faces were red and wet with sweat but they were smiling and determined. The groups of tall men in their purple robes had gone long ago, after very chivalrously and self-importantly taking the first four or five turns in a row; now the Lord of Miracles was left with his most fervent devotees, these short, average-looking, amazingly strong women from the pueblo, to carry him on the last long uphill stretch home. And that wasn't all. When they got to the door of the church I thought for sure they'd let the thing drop. But this is Peru: before retiring, the Lord of Miracles has to dance. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Right at the church door the band suddenly struck up a lively marinera, and I heard my friend Luis say to the carriers, Ok, I don't know how you all are going to do this, but we're gonna make this thing dance!, and the group of carriers started skipping around and turning from side to side so that the image was actually dancing the marinera. I was speechless. All I had energy left for myself was to go get the tray of hot chocolate and rolls for the band when the whole thing was over. (It was the best hot chocolate I have ever had--it tasted like Señora Sofía had put in cinnamon and honey and who knows what else.) One of the band players did a funny little eyebrow-lift thing whenever I looked at him. And that was the procession of the Lord of Miracles.