Brittany McGee

I feel like I just blinked and the “Feria Religiosa en Honor a la Santísima Cruz de Chalpón de Olmos” was over. The official last day was this past Saturday, September 6. After more than 3 weeks of the fair, of which I was here for 2, the cross was carried, in a very ceremonious way, back to its home in the hills.

The fair is officially organized and put on by a committee in association with the Catholic Church. While it is technically a Catholic event, the entire town, including the municipality leaders, participates, regardless of their personal religious affiliation.

In addition to pop-up-tiendas and carnival games, the fair brought various bands, including the very popular Peruvian band Corazon Serrano to town. Friday, September 5, I went with my host sister and brother-in-law to the concert, which they actually call a dance. The venue was relatively large (maybe 1,000 people could have fit) and essentially consisted of a small stage with a concrete ground and benches along the edges.

The family band started playing promptly at 10PM, with only two of its singers on stage. They played through one song before the female singers ran onto stage to take their places. The band, who recently lost one of its sisters and lead singers, had just added a 14-year-old girl to the mix, and she rocked it. As the night progressed, the “Queen” of the festival came on stage to dance and brought up one of her friends. In between songs, the band read names aloud from scratch pieces of paper that fans had handed them. Fans also climbed the stage and took pictures with the band members, during songs. My host sister encouraged me to go and take a picture, because it’s apparently a super normal thing to do, but I opted out in favor of being a people watcher.  It didn’t take long for me to realize how loyal Corazon Serrano fans are and how engaged with the fans the band members are.

At midnight, my sister, brother-in-law and I called it a night and made the trek back to the house on foot. It took us all of 10 minutes to walk home, and I could hear the band continuing to play even as I lied down for the night.

The next morning, my host brother-in-law suggested we find the cross before it made its final trek to its home in the hills. The three of us, plus my two nieces, squished into a moto-taxi that dropped us off behind a procession of probably 100 people. The cross was being carried in front of the procession with a band right behind it. People walked slowly, thoughtfully and carefully with the cross until we reached a chapel literally on the edge of town.

For whatever reason, the people carrying the cross could not fit it through the door, so they held it in front and people rushed to touch it. After both my nieces touched the cross, we ventured down to the “river” as we waited for the cross to enter the Church.

As the sun grew stronger, I grew more tired and luckily my family decided to opt out of the mass. We went to the Plaza de Armas where my 5-year-old niece jumped on one of the giant trampolines and headed home.

This morning, as I went for a run through town, I found small remnants of the fair—paintings on the streets, banners hanging from buildings. And in the Plaza de Armas, they were sweeping up the debris left behind from the tiendas and games. And in the blink of an eye, the 70^th year of the fair had concluded.