Peruvian Culture Essay

Although there were very few Peruvians in Langley Park at the time, everyone seemed to know about Peruvian culture, specifically about Andean folk magic. The week after my Abuelita arrived in Langley Park she had her first customer. It was a Ecuadorian woman, she was in her early 30s, and she approached my Abuelita while she was at the super market. She begged my grandmother to perform a Limpia and offered to pay for my Abuelita’s groceries, she said she had a job interview in a couple of weeks and wanted a limpia to held her get the job. A limpia is a spiritual cleaning; it is supposed to remove negativity from a person’s spirit and body. For the spiritual aspect, it is believed to get rid of bad luck, curses, and negative spirits attached to you and balance your chakras. Mentally, it is believed to help with addictions and phobias. Physically, it is believed to remove joint pain, and relive you of simple things like constipation and sinuses. You use a regular raw unbroken egg, it can be store-bought, you dip the egg into a glass holy water— if you don't have holy water then Florida water also works or you can say certain prayers over a regular glass of tap water, you can also burn incense if you like, white sage and lavender were my Abuelita’s favorite. You take the egg out of the water once it is room temperature and you begin to “work” the body, which means you rub the egg over
She was 73 years old and she had more energy than anyone. We always joked that she would go out [die] dancing, and the day after Christmas we were at Tia Mercedes house having another Christmas party, and Abuelita was dancing in the living room and then she wasn’t. The parties stopped, the cookouts stopped. We all kinda stopped living for a while. She was the person who breathed life into us, without her the world seemed