Semana Santa in Ayacucho

Location:
Ayacucho, Peru

Other Activity

By Lorraine Caputo

Semana Santa, or Holy Week, Latin America’s most important religious holiday, begins on Palm Sunday and culminates on Easter Sunday. Ayacucho’s celebrations are amongst the most traditional, alongside Sevilla, Spain. Spectacular processions are accentuated by flower-carpeted streets and ninatoros (bull effigies with firework horns). Scents of incense, gunpowder and bonfires mingle with aromas from street vendors’ stall offering chorrizo ayacuchano (a savory pork sausage served with potatoes and salad), pisco punch and mazamorra de llipta (a milk and corn drink). Canticle songs in Spanish and Quechua weave through cerulean daytime skies and starry nights.

For ten days, beginning the Friday before Palm Sunday, fervent Catholic faithful crowd Ayacucho’s streets. They share the joys and sorrows of the last days of Christ’s life: His Palm Sunday arrival on a white donkey, accompanied by 12 devotee “apostles” and 300 llamas and donkeys. Good Friday night, beneath the light of a thousand candles upon statues’ palanquins, they mourn his death. His resurrection on Sábado de Gloria is feasted with horse parades and bull runs through Ayacucho’s streets and a huge fair on Acuchimay hill. Dancing and drinking until dawn follow, while awaiting the appearance of the resurrected Christ statue.

As Semana Santa often draws tens of thousands of visitors to Ayacucho, you must make hotel reservations months in advance. The tourism office also keeps names of families renting rooms.

In or near Ayacucho, you can visit Barrio Santa Ana, Museo Arqueológico Hipólito Unanue, Museo de Arte Popular, Ruinas Vilcashuamán and Baños Intihuatana, and Complejo Arqueológico Wari.