Restoring a Jesus Child in Santurantikuy (Walter Coraza Morveli)
Every year in the city of Cusco in the days before Christmas the santurantikuy market is organized. It takes place each year with out fail. Here you will find grass, moss, and other herbs for the nativity as well as objects made from ceramics and porcelain, such as the Christ Child, the Niño Manuelito.
This year the organization of snaturantikuy was prepared differently. All of the stands were told they should have tents so that the rains that always fall this time of year would not impacted them. Each row was given a space of five meters so that people could move freely and make their purchases.
This year the organizers, EMUFEC, broke with traditions and carried out the fair on the 23rd and 24th instead of during just one day. This made it easier for people to look and appreciate all the offerings as well as buy what they wanted. You could hear our traditional villancicos, Christmas carols, from speakers on the corner of the main square of our city. Sahumeríos, burning incense, helped to give us a real festive ambience.
Traffic was blocked from entering the Plaza de Armas for this event so that people could easily enter the market of santurantikuy without fighting cars. Rain came early and there were merchants roaming around offering ponchos and umbrellas so people could move around without worrying about the wetness.
Santurantikuy does not only refer to sales carried out in the Plaza de Armas, there are other places as well where you can buy greenery and herbs as well as animal statues for the nativity scenes installed in homes and elsewhere. There is a similar fair carried out in Santiago that is where most people go to buy the herbs and plants.
As a result, during the days before Christmas people walked all through the rows set up on the Plaza and elsewhere in order to obtain what they needed for this feast so strongly awaited by children and adults.
