Angels and Demons Halloween revisited

    Ecuador doesn’t celebrate Halloween but they have New Year’s Eve to take Halloween’s place. Today there are bad spirits about. They are atop cars, seated in chairs in retail stores, looking down from balconies, slumped on curbs and grouped near churches. Some are fully dressed and have ears and noses and eyes and mouths. Others are misformed aberrations that somehow have survived termination. The tradition is to stuff them with messages, good and bad, light them on fire in the street, then  jump over them to make your wishes come true. The effigies have been appearing early. In a spirit place like Cuenca, with churches and crosses in every part of town, one has to accept that there are Demons as well as Angels. Getting rid of bad has good consequences. In a place where there were only five murders last year, there is still a reservoir of pent up anger that has to be released. We need our rituals and traditions. Certain things in our certain world are unpleasantly uncertain.