Walking through the Museum, and the grounds below, gives footnotes of the past.
All that is left of the past here are rock walls of homes and stone walls built to terrace land so crops could be grown on hillsides. The soil is deep, dark, rich, and, with light and rain, it is not impossible to see it feeding an Empire.
Standing on this hill, clouds seem like you can touch them.
It is hard to reconcile this peaceful place with human sacrifices but blood has always been how you pay Gods back for transgressions.
The Incan Empire grew through conquest and peaceful assimilation. They built roads, like the Romans, and developed infrastructure and capabilities to organize large numbers of people.
When you climb over hills, look out, stomp in the dirt and see water, flowers, birds, animals, you can understand the Inca civilization that grew out of nature.
The Incan Code was do not steal, do not lie, and do not be lazy.
We sacrifice humans today, but we do it in slower, more treacherous ways.
The Incan’s, very slowly, are starting to look less savage than I have been taught to see them.
These two couples, just married, are getting their wedding photos taken in Parque Calderone.
When I first see them they have, with them, a young bearded tenor sax player playing ” Here comes the Bride ” on a street corner.
Their little photographer is contorted to get the right angle for his shots, the young women are smiling and laughing. Their new husbands look bemused and eager to please.
The entourage crosses the street, the ladies lifting white gowns so they won’t get them dirty, They take more photos by the spot where I witnessed official ceremonies celebrating ex pats, good business prospects, and a new transport system.
The last wedding I happened upon was in Montevideo, Uruguay on Sarandi Street.
This is just as memorable.
Everyone is happy, and, if they stay that way, they will be together when they are old.
They are, as a friend once told me, about rapping his knuckles on stones on a square in Russia, ” Marking the Moment. ”
The domes of the New Cathedral can be seen from most high ground in Cuenca.
The New Cathedral was built in the last hundred years but still qualifies to be called new. The Old Cathedral, on the other side of Parque Calderone, is smaller, less ambitious, and is used now for events, occasional ceremonies, and as a museum.
The New Cathedral is simple on the outside but grandiose inside.
Standing inside, on marble floors, with enormous space above and around me, I am humbled. Modern man is not accustomed to being humble until events spiral out of control and they are looking at their homes destroyed in a flood, earthquake,hurricane, or fire.
In older days, there weren’t as many screens shielding us from reality or ideologues trying to shape the way we see the world around us.
People died young, the fact that some are rich and most are poor was accepted as normal, and armies marched across borders with fire and brimstone. These days no one on television tells you problems are insurmountable and the only thing you can do is pray.
This morning, people kneel in prayer, some light candles, some quietly sit in the pews, touch their beads or read catechisms on I phones. There is no official ceremony today and Christ is eclipsed by gold trim. Flat screen televisions ,mounted on stanchions ,help those in the back of the church see services when church is in session.. There is one confession box open and a sole lady waits to go inside and confess her small sins that aren’t likely to sink our boat.
Outside,city life continues without repose, or reflection.
Vendors are selling candles, rosaries, beads as you reach the Cathedral’s front steps. On another side of the church are stalls selling Christmas stockings, cards, and tree ornaments. A man selling lottery tickets does a brisk business and cops ensure that thieves know there are earthly punishments to add to spiritual ones.
Knowing what I know about the Spanish conquest of South America, and the part the church played, I find it hard to stay here and be respectful.
You can buy flowers all over Cuenca, but one of the best places to buy is at a small flower market in front of the Sanctuario Mariano, across from the New Cathedral, down the street from Parque Calderone. Daily, under white canvas tents, ladies and men do flower arrangements, sell flowers, meet the public.
Cut flowers are one of Ecuador’s big exports, number 3.
Roses are the most popular for export to the U.S. and the industry employs 103,000 people and generates 800 to 900 million dollars annually to the Ecuador economy. Despite stiff foreign competition and changing likes of customers, the industry has improved its working conditions. Ecuador roses are world class quality and benefit from a longer growing season with no winter and lots of natural light. Cool Andean nights give the roses time to add coloration.
Facts are facts, but roses are a way to a woman’s heart.
Men, with a briefcase in one hand and a bouquet of roses in the other, leave the market today with quiet hopeful smiles.
There are surprises on walks, many of them small, many that will be missed if you are not in the right mind to see them.
My first surprise this morning is horses in Calderone Park that kids can ride, pushed by a man. These equines roll easily on park paths. They look well fed, have saddles and reins, and come in all sizes. They appear real till you see their marble eyes and tongues that look like the end of Santa’s sock.
Another surprise is on a bridge crossing the Rio Tomebamba.There are three sets of locks, knotted together on a bridge railing. This might have begun as a protest, but, more than likely, a prankster kicked it off with one lock and chain with others jumping on board later. There is a similar, much larger, collection of locks knotted together like this in a Montevideo business district so I know even the zaniest things happen all over the world and I, or you, will not likely come up with something new under the sun.
A third surprise today is street art on walls leading down stairs to the river. Colorful, eccentric, imaginative, even obscene, the shapes, colors, and graffiti are difficult to ignore.
Even though I go looking for odd , I don’t want too much of it.
Without a lot of sameness, odd is not very interesting.
I speculate that Heaven is the only perfect place only a few are ever going to see. and, even in Heaven there will be a few loose strings and butt cans to be emptied.
Even angels have a hard time quitting cigarettes.
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.
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..
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.
There is political and social unrest around the world.
This protest in Parque Calderone centers around recent Constitutional Amendments approved by the National Assembly in Quito. Ecuador has a representative democracy and it is written in their Constitution that the people must directly vote on changes to their Constitution.
This protest focuses on four of 12 recent amendments. The first eliminates term limits for some elected officials. The second affects the right of government workers to organize and strike. The third concerns the use of the military for police work. The fourth deals with freedom of speech and press.
The police presence is odorous and they use tear gas, swat teams, and horses to keep protests isolated and small. People trying to join the protest, or see it, are diverted away from the conflict.
What is striking is how few come out to protect their rights being changed by the stroke of someone else’s pen.
Too many people aren’t protecting their freedom.
Too many people still fantasize that the State is their friend.
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