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.
The last accident covered in Scott Treks was a rollover in Montevideo, Uruguay on the Rambla.
In this case, in the Cuenca Historical District, by the time I walk to see what the crowd is about, the scene is just a crashed blue bus with its front end partially inside the front door of a corner retail shop, a fire engine and ambulance on scene, yellow plastic tape roping off the area, cops in lime colored jackets keeping people away, no bodies lifeless in the street.
The funny part is the difficulty cops have in keeping people from ducking under their yellow tape, bypassing the scene, and continuing on their way. Authorities have roped off the entire intersection so people coming from all four directions are stopped from moving forward and told they have to go back the way they came.
Some people shrug shoulders at this nuisance, some approach the cops and are let through barriers with special permission, others lift the yellow tape and go through the intersection when the cop is distracted. It is difficult to get people to do even the simplest things when they don’t feel it makes sense or makes them change their behavior.
The accident happened in a second but it will take hours to wrap up the investigation and pin ” cause ” on something or someone.
This accident looks like it might go back to failed brakes, but human error is at the heart of most accidents.
This afternoon us humans have made yet another mess.
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.
This band is from Otavalo, Ecuador and is playing on a corner by the Cuenca New Cathedral.
Dressed in costume, the musicians play, sing, dance,and pose with a European tourist who wants his wife to take a photo of him playing an Andean pipe. Managers and friends sell band CDs and crafts on the sidewalk in front of the performers as they entertain.
While the group is performing, a policeman asks for the band’s permit papers, stamped and signed.
The bands leader produces their authorization,and, moments later, the cop returns papers to him and walks away, satisfied.
Winay, is energetic, surprisingly contemporary, and draws a crowd.
We all like to be entertained and when these musicians dance they look like feathered dervishes drawing circles on the sidewalk with their toes and bare feet.
The spirit that makes them dance captures us too.
The police man, like all government officials, satisfied with seeing proper paperwork in order, has moved on.
I see him, emotionless, slipping a traffic ticket under the windshield wipers of a nearby delivery van, illegally parked by the flower market.
Laws, after all, are laws.
If we don’t have our laws, aren’t we the same as savages dancing to multiple Gods, under sparkling stars ,on dark windblown mysterious nights?
The Museo Pumapungo’s second floor features exhibits on Ecuador’s geographical zones.
In one room is Amazon man with a blowgun who welcomes you into his jungle. Amazonian’s dress light and move silent as the animals they pursue. They live in thatched homes made from broad leaves and use nature’s pigments to decorate themselves.
Another room is dedicated to fishing people of the coast, and Galapagos, who wear jewelry made with sea shells and have fishing nets and boats that take them to their harvest. They wear simple clothes and use wood harpoons with iron points to hunt whales.
The Andes room shows colorful finely woven garments, mountains, terraced hillsides for growing corn and squash, alpacas and exotic looking llamas.
People live the land here.
The world changes, becoming standardized. Texting, television, internet and communications open propaganda to everyone, instantly. Standardized tests, standardized medicine, standardized zoning ,standardized construction, standardized money,standardized language drown us.
As the world becomes homogenized, we lose that which is important, for that which is expedient, easy, and makes someone else rich.
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?
When people are shut out from having a say about what happens to them, by those they have elected, protests are inevitable.
Some protests move into chaos and violence,some are contained, others are snuffed out like the tip of a burning candle.
I make myself invisible, slip away, and don’t get home till late because streets are blocked off, going and coming.
Protests seldom lead to solutions, but they create emotions.
Governments can be toppled on emotion.
No government exists that will give us what we want without taking away what we need.
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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.
What I should have done was read about the ruins before I got here.
Lamanai, which means submerged crocodile, is a Mayan city in the Orange District of Belize. It dates to the sixteenth century B.C. and was occupied into the seventeen hundreds A.D. It was a city of forty thousand and combined farming and fishing and large trade networks for success.
The three main structures, excavated in the 1970’s by David Pendergast, are the Jaguar temple, the Mask, the High Temple. The Mask Temple is the tombs of successive rulers who built their burial place atop that of their predecessor. The High Temple is in a natural amphitheater and was the site of public spectacles, religious ceremonies, and political grandstanding.
Standing in this hot humid jungle looking at tourists climbing to the top of huge stone structures, I weigh the manpower and skills needed to build them and the spiritual and political reasons for completing them.
Longevity speaks of doing things right for a long time in the time and place you find yourself.
What would they have thought of our world if they could have imagined it?
Would they choose, if they had the choice, our world over theirs?
This church rents a shut down movie theater on Sundays for two services -8 :30 and 10:00 am. The mother church is in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Sagebrush, I have been told by an Albuquerque friend who is a member, is on Albuquerque’s west side and has locations in other New Mexico cities.
Sagebrush Belize is raising money in San Pedro Town to build a new facility, over the bridge, in sight of this movie theater, right where a wood sign now sticks in a sand lot.
There are questions raised by church members about spending a million dollars on a building but the official answer is that it is expensive to rent and the church needs room to grow. What began as a Bible study in an upstairs room has become more.
Belize has pressing needs. Churches serve more quickly, economically, and responsibly than government.
Having a million dollar temple is not going to get you closer to Jesus, but it isn’t going to hurt recruiting.
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