Cuenca is a World Heritage City.
World Heritage cities possess geographical, cultural, artistic, archeological, and architectural wonders which UNESCO believes are worth protecting.
In Parque Calderone, these photographs were taken between 1890-1930. They are of indigenous Ecuadorian peoples in the Amazon.
Most show the native peoples in their Amazonian lifestyle and Spanish Catholic priests going about the business of conversion. Progress, it seems, moves people away from land and into cities, away from many God’s to one God, puts shoes on their feet, clothes on their back, and time into their consciousness.
The faces are startling. They are stern, piercing, resisting, fierce.
Descendants of these people still live in the jungle. Some drive ATV’s, have cell phones, and check e-mails. They also remember stories of old ways and, at dark, around a fire, gather in ceremonies to celebrate nature and spirits priests hide from.
How do you tell people their Gods are not Gods, without resistance?
Modern art is an oxymoron.
When you go to galleries and see ” modern ” art you are seeing art done by masters whose works have critical interest and investors fretting over value.
Modern Art in this gallery, this month, is Eduardo Sola Franco, an Ecuadorian native, who was not only a painter but a sculptor, stage set designer, illustrator, experimental film maker. He was born in 1915 and passed in the last few years.
This is a retrospective of some of his output, which is voluminous.
His art, like much Central and South American art, is conflicted, political, full of dark colors and religious symbolism. In America, we tend to keep spirits in their place, under the doormat. In South America, there is a rich tradition of giving spirits time in the spotlight.
Franco’s art is tormented but he has been identified as a Modern master of Ecuador, a non-conservative gay man captured in a conservative culture.
The Museum is quiet, free, with nice grounds, clean facilities, and bathrooms.
The art on the walls in this Contemporary Art Gallery is self absorbed,and, for this reason alone, completely of our time.
Plaza Otorongo is a popular meeting place.
It is at the bottom of a huge hill near the Tomebamba river and one way to enter and leave the plaza is ascending or descending a long and steep stairway. Stairs are grouped in sections with five steps and a landing to each section. Going down is hard, but going up, at eight thousand feet above sea level, is stout.
The Plaza has restaurants, lodgings, a yoga and pilates studio, art gallery, and a huge open courtyard. Certain times of day students use these steps as a shortcut to go down to the Plaza and across the river to the University of Cuenca.
This morning a young man exits at the top of the stairs. An old man is going down, the way I came up, moving diagonally down the stairs so he doesn’t pitch forward and fall down.
Street art reminds you that urban problems won’t disappear. Drugs, crime, deteriorating infrastructure, broken promises and broken dreams don’t go because we don’t like to see them. Street art is the safety cap on the tea kettle. If it is humming, you have to take a closer look at the fire.
Cuenca, for all it’s Old World charm, has New World pain..
Cities, like rivers, always have dangerous cross currents.
Humans wear clothes. Some wear more, some less. Some are expensive, glamorous with designer touches straight from the runway, some are little better than rags.
This morning, in the Rio Tomebamba River, a family washes their clothes and bedding.
Two women, wearing yellow rubber boots, stand in the river, soak fabric in water, pound clothes on rocks to remove dirt like ancient Inca people. They have detergent in plastic buckets that they work into the material and suds run into the river and are taken away downstream.
This wash will take most of the day to complete with the longest time needed for the sun to dry blankets before they can be folded, carefully placed in hand woven cloth bags, and carried home.
This family started early and already has washed clothes and draped blankets over a concrete wall that separates the river from the road.
We are not as distant from poverty as we want to believe.
There are many in this world who don’t have a washing machine, or the electricity to power it, and come down to the river early when the birds shake themselves awake and try out a few of their sweetest melodies with sunbeams as musical staffs.
Cartegena, Columbia is a spirit place even if I hate its heat, humidity, street vendors, and dirty streets.
There are spirits in that Old City behind huge locked doors, in notches cut into stone walls that held big guns aimed at pirate ships coming for treasure. Spirits sit on the steps of the Museo of the Inquisition where great battles for souls played out in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds.
Cuenca is also a spirit place. On any day, even if you take the same route you did yesterday, there are surprises.
There are troubled clouds that mass over the New Cathedral like demons trying to break down iron doors. There are muscled figures out of science fiction movies, chained to a balcony, who look down at you with a scowl. There is a mixture of old world and new world, and, turning any corner, you can not be sure what might spill in front of you, whether you are ready to catch it, or not.
Paper figures hang on a wire fence by the Rio Tomebamba and are so fragile they are twisted and torn by forces outside their control.
Some say we are paper too, holding tightly to our conventions, with all our strength, so we are not blown into the river and drowned.
Forces for good, and evil, are always blowing us here and there with big gusts of their breath, like we are small sailboats on a big ocean..
By the New Cathedral, on a cloudy afternoon, these performers stand motionless.
Then, they move and beckon to a little girl to pose for a photo with them with her mom. After the photo, they blow them a parting kiss and return to their rigid pose. They work for tips, depending on generosity to fill the bowl on the ground at their feet.
What is unseen is that this little girl, twice earlier, walked to the bowl, bent down to take a ten dollar bill until her mother called her back.
I should have left coins.
Temptation, especially for kids, is never far away, and succumbing is all too human.
Ronald doesn’t mind getting photographed. Just five minutes ago, two kids sat next to the icon eating fries and sipping Coca Cola.
How is it that a clown can become the most famous person in the world?
Ronald’s only resume is red hair, crazy colored clothes, clown shoes, and a continual smile.
In a city like this with hundreds of bronze statues of military men, conquerors,artists, writers, and churchmen, how can Ronald be so comfortable with himself?
It seems time to run Ronald for President in 2016.
We have puppets in office, but electing a puppet, who doesn’t pretend to be something he isn’t, would be the most honest thing we have done in years.
Ecuador has a new changing young generation.
A still small number of its children have adopted the music, talk, style of other big city children around the world. There is graffiti in Cuenca. You see some tattoos, some ear piercings and dyed hair, torn levi’s with holes in them, a liking to turn raucous rap way way up.
At a Gazebo in Parque Calderone, where adult protesters recently yelled against government tyranny, these kids are peacefully practicing dance moves. Each individual on the stage has his own routine, his own steps, his own personality.
Ecuador is a country where you watch young people taking the arm of mom or grand mom as they walk down a bumpy sidewalk. It is a country where older men, and women, still wear traditional attire of their village, bright skirts, black hats, braided hair, stoic looks.
This new generation moves us into new times with a few bumps and grinds..
There are, however, worse things these kids could be doing than dancing in the park on a Monday night.
If only all generational change were this easy.
At the top of the hill are panoramic views.
Cuenca, Ecuador has expanded as far north and south as you can see, stopped only by the Cajas National Reserve on one end and more mountains on the other. Red tile roofs and reddish bricks look like a bloody battlefield but there are no wars here.
Andres, our guide, gives a history lesson.
” There are about half a million people in Cuenca. The major industries are tourism, building construction and fabrication, and selling homes.”
You can see a few landmarks from this observation point, if you know them. You can see the twin blue striped domes of the New Church in Parque Calderone. You can see the soccer stadium and the goldish planet shaped planatarium that locates Gringoland.
” Ecuadorians are a clean people. We are taught to pick things up and be polite.” Andres says.
The funniest thing is when I tell him I am from New Mexico. His ears perk up.
” What city? ”
” Albuquerque. ”
He smiles and says ” Breaking Bad. ” We both laugh.
” The best thing, ” he advises, ” is to buy land. ” You buy the land for ten thousand, build a house, sell the house”
There are plenty of Ex-Pats into real estate in Ecuador, buying up farms in the Andes, old homes in Cuenca, beach bungalows in Salinas.
Riding real estate waves is a popular financial sport for people who have money but want more, and making money without working sparkles like your girl’s best diamond ring.
All these places with good real estate deals that market to foreigners had even better deals before they were discovered.
In Ecuador, as elsewhere, it is best to hire a lawyer to represent you because ownership of properties is convoluted and price is always negotiable.
Riding real estate waves is not always without wipe outs.
Up top, on our double decker bus, you have wind and sun, but, on this trip, you can’t stand up because low hanging electric wires will take off your neck. Our guide reminds us to watch for low hanging wires, watch the tree on your right, don’t stand too close to the edge of the top floor rail. From the second deck, we all see the city as we pass through, weaving, bobbing, climbing, descending and ascending hills.
This Cuenca city tour takes us in a circle from Parque Calderone to the Mirador de Turi and back. We leave the Historical District, cross into a newer part of the city, climb hills to the famous look out point, then return through the opposite end of the Historical District that we left from, ending back at our beginning.
Andres gives commentary in English and Spanish but mostly all you have time on this tour to do is point your camera, shoot, enjoy the sights.
The ride costs $8.00 U.S. and takes, with a half hour stop at Turi, two hours. Along the way, I see a Panama Hat Museo that might be fun to visit. The Museo Pumapungo looks important. There are lots of churches crying for admiring photographers..
Our guide tells us that Cuenca, a World Heritage City, has only five murders a year instead of Chicago’s five a day.
After driving in this mid day traffic, I would think bus drivers here would shoot at least one person a day so the murder rate in Cuenca wouldn’t sound fictitious.
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