The Lord of Miracles in Lima

The main event of Lima’s ‘purple month’ and the Lord of Miracles festival is a 24-hour procession, the largest in South America. The procession winds through the main streets of Lima from Las Nazarenas Church to La Merced Church in Barrios Altos, led by an icon borne on a 2-ton litter by a series of devoted religious brotherhoods. Hordes of faithful follow along, clad in purple…. Devoted crowds, incense wielders, singers, and dancers toss flowers into the streets…. Yelling street vendors offer their wares of traditional dishes and sweets, predominantly the Turrón de Doña Pepa, a sticky anise-flavored sweet traditionally associated with October. Its creator was a black slave, Josefa Marmanillo (Doña Pepa), who believed that her devotion to the Lord of Miracles returned to her the use of her arms and hands. 

The Lord of Miracles refers to an image of Christ painted on an adobe wall now located in the main altar of the Las Nazarenas Sanctuary in Lima. (The icon used in the procession is a replica.) It was painted centuries ago by an Angolan slave in the Pachacamilla slum in the former outskirts of Lima, a member of one of the religious brotherhoods which predominated in that time to assist with community needs of their members. The hermandades were composed of freed men and slaves and operated with ecclesiastical permission, arranging baptisms and funerals and even providing loans to buy one’s freedom.

In 1655 a devastating earthquake shook Lima and Callao, tumbling temples and homes while killing or injuring thousands. Pachacamilla fell, save one wall: the one with the Christ painting. In the following decades, the image gained a reputation for granting miracles. Night meetings gathered round the wall, punctuated with religious songs. Disapproving religious authorities forbade the gatherings of the growing cult and sponsored various attempts to erase the image, which in their failure ultimately only strengthened its reputation and popularity. This solitary wall survived another violent quake before the image, now known as the Lord of Miracles, was declared the patron saint of Lima and its protector against earthquakes in 1715. Although originally identified almost entirely with Lima’s Afro-Peruvian community, the Lord of Miracles has since been wholeheartedly embraced by Lima and the rest of coastal Peru.