This affair starts early.
Usually, people wait till dark to do their exorcisms, but this bunch has already laid their body in the street in front of a business and are stuffing papers down its pants.
In a world of camera phones, nothing goes un-noticed and un-reported. These participants don’t care if people are watching. It is probable this is a replica of their boss and they are, as a group, telling him what they think of him. It takes a few matches before smoke comes with fire close behind.
There is something eerie about seeing a body set on fire, even if It is a make believe body.It calls up images from the Mid East where real people are set on fire, heads cut off, and people blow each other up with explosives..
This bloodletting will be over tonight and tomorrow shops will close, streets and sidewalks will be hosed down, and people will spend time with family.
Exorcisms are best finished quickly, and remembered for a long long time.
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.
Down from the Moreno bridge, this wall mural gives a quick lesson on Ecuador. All the familiar Ecuador themes are presented in public here.
There is a Panama hat that bobs its way through Cuenca. The making of Panama hats goes far back into Ecuadorian history. Oddly, the only people who wear these hats today are older indigenous Indians from small remote Ecuadorian towns or tourists from across the oceans,either direction. Teens seem to favor baseball caps decorated with professional soccer team logos or the American New York Yankees trademark symbol.
There is a pig spread eagled on a stick on this mural wall. Ecuadorians love pork and in the mercado you see roasted pigs laid out every day for the lunch trade.
A woman washes her families clothes in the river.
There are candles and a church at the top of a winding road along with Inca symbols, spirit faces, and big ears of corn that is a staple food in Ecuador.
This is a country that has one foot in the Amazon jungle and the other in Andes clouds.
Ecuador’s mural is not like one of Canada, the United States,New Zealand, or South Africa.
Life would be intolerable if we had to look at the same mural in every country we visited.
Learning new lessons is one reason to travel.
Some of my new lessons actually become part of my daily playbook.
This exhibit is in a Cuenca city government supported gallery, Salon del Pueblo, next to the Don Colon Restaurant, across from the New Cathedral.
The artist is a teacher of art locally. He was born in Cuenca. His art is stark and grotesque but his drawing technique is exquisite.
Here are the artist’s own words :
” The grotesque in my imagery is essential. I use it to unveil the present time situation where reality is shaped by deformation. I portray a dominant culture that imposes its perspectives in order to maintain its power. Its main instrument is media because it easily spreads ideas about the ‘others.’ Television is a good example to understand how economic and political powers try to shape our lives. They sell and impose on people their goals and dreams; they deceive us to defend their economic interest. Those ideals are false, illusion,and, therefore, there is an effect of distortion. Mass media consumers are filled with ready to consume ideas presented in spectacle formats…… The grotesque in the Spanish culture is also known as ” esperpento”, an aesthetic term coined by the writer Ramon del Valle-Inclan. He used it to describe his time as obscure and ruled by the power of the monarchy and the Catholic Church in Spain…… In my view, the idea of ” esperpento” is still a means to criticize power. I use it to understand a society where consumerism and entertainment shape the way people see their future, themselves, and others. To see life through a TV screen is to see it, distorted….. ”
” To sum up, the grotesque in my work is the way to represent the journey in a contradictory system that sells dreams for a very high price. ”
On the 24th of December there is a massive Christmas parade through downtown Cuenca.
On the 25th of December, the day officially celebrated as Christ’s birthday, there is a much smaller and simpler celebration at the New Cathedral across from the Parque Calderone.
Entering the park, you see people gathering in front of the Cathedral. In the street are decorated cars, children with angel wings seated on saddles, and a marching band of old men in suits, white shirts and ties waiting to march and celebrate with their trumpets, saxophones, trombones and bass drum.
Coming out of the church, is a small doll carried on a platform supported by the broad backs of men and women.
As the doll is carried from the darkness of the church interior, into the sunlight, believers throw rose pedals in the air and make way for a procession.
Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus and Easter celebrates his conquering of death.
Romans worshiping Caesar must have felt much the same as they watched him being carried through his city in much the same way.
The big difference is Caesar couldn’t give life after death.
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