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Remarkably, of all the traditions lived by the Peruvian emigrants in Spain, this has the most followers. It is possible that the Black origins as well as the racial mix in the followers have helped to increase the number of supporters. These criteria translate two realities: (a) the region of origin and (b) the belief brought from Peru that this Christ has been able to solve their difficulties. These followers indicate that they associate with other emigrants in order to continue living what they learned and lived in their land.
In the village of Motupe, about 78 km of Chiclayo, capital of the Department of Lambayeque, and almost 900 km from Lima, the Cross of the Chalpón is celebrated. It is a light log without the Christ that usually accompanies it. There are numerous places in the Andean mountain in which only the Cross is venerated. Every August, it descends from a cavern located at the summit of the mountain where it was found by Rudesindo Ramirez and José Mercedes Anteparra in 1868 (Junquera Rubio, 1999, pp. 169-179).
This devotion, in Spain and Madrid of course, has followers coming from the Peruvian North coast: Trujillanos, Lambayecanos, Piuranos and Tumbesinos mainly, just as from other distant regions, coastal as well. When asking the emigrants the purpose of their belief in a distant land and the reason for their commemoration, the following answers were obtained; for one man of Chiclayo, the Cross of the Chalpón has “granted him many favors since he has been in Spain”, but most remarkably he has been able to obtain documentation when it seemed impossible; a woman Mochumí, a village south of Motupe, says that the Cross of Motupe managed to soften the heart of the employer and now enjoys all the benefits like any other Spanish worker.
In emigration movements there arise some aspects in which religious experience has been carried on for a long time. Evidently, the religious criteria involve other social aspects. Doubtlessly, others involve Latin Americans and not only Peruvians. These identities are not exclusive, nor demand either that the original idea is rejected or relegated. The processes of resetting the identity that is developed abroad and between emigrants indicate a narrow bond between the ethnic agents and the religious people, because the religious phenomenology constantly renews the culture and the ethnic identity.
If counted with enough support, there would be a surge for what we can consider native churches (those that are developed at the margin of the Church or that is only followed when needed), which is a clear and more integral example of the constant modification of identities. Also, they inspire an energetic interrelation between the religious identity, arisen from the millenarian belief and the messianic practice, as well as from the revitalization of the ethnic identity.
On the other hand are the social and religious movements that group individuals of diverse cultural connections, understanding the individuals of urban or rural cultures just like marginalized natives or those not familiar with the communitarian characteristics. They adapt their ideology from a singular mixture of traditions and experiences that come from different cultures and subcultures.
What unites the emigrants, as faithful to a belief, is mainly the devotion to that new culture that is formed with a mix of the old and the new movements. In these cases, the emergent identities are fundamentally religious and are elaborated from the new beliefs and ritual practices. They usually repudiate other forms of identification because they grant another form of being in the universe of believers. It should not be forgotten that religious experiences are the most important at the time of valuing personal identity.
Bowser, F. P. (1977). El esclavo africano en el Perú Colonial. MÉXICO. Edt. Siglo XXI
Junquera Rubio, C. (1996). Etnia, en 10 Palabras clave sobre racismo y xenofobia. ESTELLA. Edt. Verbo Divino, páginas 197-227.
Junquera Rubio, C. (1999). Emigrantes peruanos en la comunidad autónoma de Madrid (España), en ESPACIO Y DESARROLLO, vol. 11, páginas 85-107.
Junquera Rubio, C. (1999). La religiosidad popular en los Andes Centrales Peruanos: La Cruz del Chalpón como fiesta del pueblo motupano, en SOCIEDAD Y UTOPÍA, vol. EXTRAORDINARIO, páginas 169-179.
Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, M. (1993). Pachacamac y el Señor de los Milagros. LIMA. Edt. Instituto de Estudios Peruanos
Carlos Junquera Rubio is a professor of Ethnology at the University of Complutense, Madrid, Spain.
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