David Baker
www.davidbakeronline.com


Lost in the fast lane

Easter week in Arequipa, Peru's second city
Financial Times, March 1, 2008

We arrived in Arequipa during Easter week, a festive time in any South American city as, if there isn't a procession passing the moment you step into the main square, there'll be a rehearsal for another just coming round the corner. And we weren't disappointed.

This is Peru's second city, although, if the Arequipenas are to be believed, it is really its first in terms of culture, history, food and gentility; Lima is something of an upstart, they say.

Its broad 17th-century central square is laid out with the serene confidence of colonial planners building at the height of the Spanish empire.

An ornate cathedral (with, apparently, the biggest organ in South America) takes up one side of the plaza, facing a solidly built town hall on the other. In between, to the left and right, are elegant colonnades of shops and bars. Above them, ran balconies where, after climbing an absurdly steep and narrow staircase, we sat and drank an Arequipena beer as the sun set over the lowlands to the west.

The square looked like any Iberian plaza at dusk - courting couples, families with children, old men passing the time on a park bench - except there were also an unusual number of policemen, cordoning off roads and waving their guns at people to clear one of the pavements. It looked like the scene for a coup d'etat (or, more likely in protest-strewn Peru, for a demonstration) but it was hard to see what all the fuss was about until, in a glorious cacophony of Catholicism, not just one, but two saints made an appearance at opposite corners of the square, lifted high on the shoulders of their parishes' great and good and each accompanied by a marching band.

As they made for the cathedral, the music mixed in the air with a dissonance that was strangely beautiful, as if Kurt Weill had written for a mariachi. We watched them disappear, after some kerfuffle as to who should go first, and headed off down one of the city's cobbled sidestreets for a llama steak and some Peruvian red wine.

The next day we visited the convent of Santa Catalina. Built in 1580 and enormous in its sweep, Santa Catalina covers a whole city block of 20,000 sq metres and was in effect an upmarket women-only gated community. Only opened to outsiders in 1970, within its high walls is a maze of well-preserved streets, like those of an elegant pueblo blanco, lined with simple but comfortable homes, which, if you could afford it, included rooms for servants and other hangers-on.

The arrival in 1871 of a strict Dominican mother superior put an end to some of the wilder parties but even now you get the feeling that life in Santa Catalina wasn't exactly one of mortification.

Back in the square, the whole town seemed to be out in its Easter best. Wandering past the church of La Compania, in the square's south-eastern corner, we came across a happy queue of people, half in and half out of the church, who seemed to be queueing for a funfair ride.

There was laughter and chatting, children were running around and vendors were walking up and down the line, selling fruit juice in plastic bags, biscuits, sweets and, for some reason, packets of Kleenex tissues.

Inside, the decorum barely improved until the queue got nearer the altar when, as if an invisible line had been crossed, those at the front rearranged their faces, quickly genuflected and ducked into one of the confessionals along the side wall.

Although Catholicism is Peru's predominant religion, as so often in South America people are happy to meld it with more local indigenous beliefs. You were left with the impression that not everyone was taking this confessional business as seriously as the stricter Jesuit fathers might have liked.

On my way out, a vendor offered me a Bible and a party kazoo emblazoned with the face of SpongeBob SquarePants. I took a pack of tissues.

By now the square itself was like a scene from Where's Wally? People were eating ice-creams, families were wandering about, acrobats were doing tricks in one corner and everyone was in holiday mood. Around the edge of the square, amateur preachers were waving their Bibles at the little crowds that had gathered to watch.

My favourite was a man who had brought with him a guitar, three or four big boxes of leaflets, two self-conscious-looking helpers and a kind of flipchart of garishly coloured vignettes from the life of Christ.

He must have been at least in his 60s but had the energy of a college jock in his first sales job and, after every eight or so pages, he would take the guitar and at the same manic volume lead an appreciative crowd in a few verses of a random hymn. His voice echoed round the square as we walked back past the cathedral towards a barrow selling strawberries dipped in chocolate.

A crowd of smartly dressed people were pushing against the locked gates, a few policemen warily keeping an eye on them. They looked an odd bunch to be making trouble so I asked a passer by what they were waiting for.

" It's a special mass," he said. "If you get into one of the two front rows the archbishop washes your feet."

And on cue the gates opened and Arequipa's devout elbowed their way in to salvation and a pedicure.