Posted on August 5, 2020
As always in 2020, I am not sure if the usual festivities will occur - because of the global pandemic. That said, here's a bit about the usual festivities:
There are several legends about the festival honoring la Virgen de las Nieves - which is held at the beginning of August in Coracora, Peru. It may be that a statue of the Virgin Mary was being carried from Lima to Cuzco, a town high in the Andes (elevation more than 11 thousand feet!). The people doing the carrying were tired and needed to rest on a mountain road near the town of Coracora (also in the Andes, around 10.4 thousand feet). Some legends say that this person or that other person had a dream that the Virgen wanted to stay there rather than traveling on to Cuzco, and some legends claim that a snowstorm kept the statue stranded on the mountain near Coracora so long that it ended up being her permanent home. (There are other variations, too!)
At any rate, the festival involves food, singing, dancing, processions to the mountain where the legends say that the statue was found, bonfires, fireworks, serenades, and other festivities. All of this can take a bit more than a week, but the main festivities occur today.
Coracora is known for raising cattle and for tourism.
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| The Andes mountains definitely get some snow each year! |
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| On this map of Peru, it does not look like Coracora is "between" Lima (large red dot on the west coast (left side of map) and Cuzco (large-ish red dot in the interior, east (right) of Lima, near the green star that is Machu Picchu. Instead, Coracora looks to be between Lima and Arequípa (large red dot in the south of the country). But mountain routes sometimes twist and turn in order to make slopes up and down that are relatively easy to travel for people, beasts of burden, and vehicles. |
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