The festival of the "Cruz Velacuy" takes place every year in the Peruvian Andes every May 3rd; with the main objective of worshiping the crosses that exist by the hundreds in our region. Its origin goes back to the first decades of the XVIII century, when it was a relatively modest private or family festivity without the lavishness that it has today.

The Cross is the symbol of Christianity; for Catholics it is also the representation of the passion of Jesus Christ. After the Spanish conquest, the cross was one of the elements of ideological struggle to evangelize the Americans and also to facilitate their compulsory worship. The "extirpators of idolatries" (Catholic priests) when destroying the Inca sanctuaries took special care to place crosses in place of their deities.

Until the middle of our century the Cruz Velacuy did not have a real importance in the festive calendar of our city; and it is that after the earthquake of 1950 that devastated Cusco, it just began to gain popularity in the urban environment, since previously this was considered a rural festivity or of "Indians".

Es gibt im Wesentlichen zwei Arten von Kreuzen: die beweglichen sind fast immer aus Holz und können während der verschiedenen Festakte in einer Prozession zu verschiedenen Orten transportiert werden, und die unbeweglichen, die im Allgemeinen in Stein gehauen oder aus Beton gefertigt sind, befinden sich fast immer in der Nähe der Kirchen, da sie aufgrund ihrer Beschaffenheit nicht transportiert werden können, weshalb alle Zeremonien zu ihren Ehren am selben Ort stattfinden.

For the celebration of the religious festivity, the neighbors of a neighborhood, rural community or an institution, organize themselves in advance, and designate a "carguyoc" or "mayordomo", each year.

This carguyoc will be responsible for planning the next celebration, so six months in advance will ask for donations to organize and present on the central day. This request or donation is called "jurk'a" many times he asks for help to his relatives, friends and close people with economic solvency. For j'urkar the butler takes house by house, a band of musicians and a bag of special breads, very tasty, after they accept the donation, they drink beer and dance for a few minutes inside the house visited.

The central day is May 3, here the crosses are taken to the temples by their devotees for the central mass, in the middle of a boisterous group of dancers. In Cusco there are several crosses with stories, some like San Francisco, Recoleta, Teteqaqa, Zarumilla, Independencia, Puma Moqo, Almudena, among others.