Celendín

Celendín is an Andean town in northern Peru and the capital of Celendín Province in the Cajamarca Department, on the road between the city of Cajamarca and Chachapoyas. According to the article its history begins in the colonial era, when it was founded and inhabited by Spanish families. In the eighteenth century Portuguese and converted Jewish settlers, who had first arrived in northern Brazil, rented a hacienda called La Pura y Limpia Concepción de Zelendin and raised the 14,010 pesos needed to buy it, an event that inspired the townspeople to elect their first authorities, with Lieutenant-Colonel Don Raymundo da Pereyra chosen in the first vote. Families of Basque origin arrived in the last decade of the eighteenth century, and a few Chinese families came later. The main plaza is dominated by the blue nineteenth-century Church of the Holy Virgin of Carmen, there is a Sunday market known for the straw hats typical of the region, and a statue of Christ the Redeemer overlooks the town. In July 2012 four citizens protesting a mining project were killed by police.