Of Death, Design and Cuenca's Independence Day: Part the Third (3rd November, 2013: Snapshots from the 193rd Anniversary of Cuenca's Declaration of Independence)

 

It is dusk and whilst strolling along the riverside of the Rio Tomebamba in central Cuenca I am drawn in by the anti-hubbub you get when the milling masses pull up and huddle for a moment, focusing their collective attention on something.  I approach to investigate. 

A small crowd have gathered around a street artist who is hunched over a sheet of posterboard, a can of spray-paint in hand.  He is using the can to spritz the delicate curve of a tree-trunk haloed in the twilight onto the posterboard.  He reaches down to pick up another can. 

But hold on, ¿why has he got a cigarette lighter in his other hand?  ¿What's he doing with...
...¡BWOOOOOMSSSSSSHHHH!  A great leaping arc of fire emanates from the point where the projection of spray has crossed the lighter's flame.

It turns out he has not become disenamoured with his work and attempted to destroy it in a fit of pique, but is merely using a rather grandstanding method to quick-dry the paint.  I spend the next 15 minutes or so watching the variation of slow, gentle arcs of spray paint counterpointed by sudden bursts of noisy conflagration, quite transfixed by the showmanship of it all.

This is one of the many artistic and artisanal delights on view from artists and makers who have gathered about the riverside over the independence weekend as an (in this case quite probably not officially invited) part of the 11th Festival Artesanías de América, organised by Cuenca's Interamerican Centre of Crafts and Popular Arts to coincide with the 193rd Anniversary of Cuenca's declaration of independence.

A veritable glut of gazebos have been set up, from which artisans from Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Uruguay are peddling an eclectic mix of alpaca shawls, straw hats and diverse items of leatherware; woolen sheep figurines and wooden tea dispensers; elephant-shaped ovens and children's mobiles made out of painted gourds hung from strings; handmade guitars and charangos; jewellery of silver, gold, stone and bead; etchings, paintings, carvings and playthings many and splendid in their variety and ingenuity; and, around the edges of the festival proper, more cheap and cheerful tat than you can swing a bag of cents at.

It is a sun-drenched early afternoon and I am standing watching delegations from each of Cuenca's barrios (neighbourhoods) filing past in celebratory high-spirits; all togged up in traditional dress, spinning and twirling, skirts a-whirling, offering sweet treats to the assembling masses from the backs of gaudied-up trucks

Crowd Control

A few hasty wanderers attempt to cross the path of the parade and are pre-emptively headed-off by a traffic steward who halts them by the simple expedient of blowing a streamer in their faces, which makes a satisfying wooshing sound.   The swirl and colour of the parade continues unabated. 

People relaxing in Parque de la Madre, taking the sudden appearance of pre-historic predators with impressive serenity.

I wander south of the Rio Tomebamba to Parque de la Madre in order to check out the progress on the construction of Cuenca's new planetarium ('the largest in Ecuador' as the under-construction sign proudly proclaims) and am presented with a most fearsome sight.  The park has been invaded by a group of fang-baring dinosaurs who are stalking ominously across the field.  This doesn't seem to have deterred the people from coming out for a picnic however.  Perhaps the pre-historic beasties have been roped-into lending their considerable bulk to help out with the construction effort.

Cuenca's new planetarium - now open to the public.

A Chola Cuencana in traditional dress made entirely from flowers - displayed in the Plaza de Flores.

And the extent of the celebrations doesn't end there.  It seems that in every park and open space in the city there is some kind of event going on.  The rest of my Cuenca independence weekend flies by in a melange of military parades (tanks, mortars and all), late night street concerts (all cumbia dancing, toffee-apples and sausages-on-a-stick) donkey races, orchestral performances (replete with cannon fire, mariachi singers and pyrotechnics), traditional dance displays and a thousand call-and-responses of:

<<¡QUE VIVA CUENCA!>>                                                                       <<¡QUE VIVA!>>

Long live Cuenca indeed.

Of Death, Design and Cuenca's Independence Day: Part the Second (We Do Not Want A Tyrant King)

In my last post I regaled you with tales of the Ecuadorian Day of the Deceased, which takes place on the 2nd of November.  But the Day of the Deceased is far from the only thing celebrated in Cuenca during the start of November.  Quite the reverse, for the 3rd of November, 1820 was the day that Cuenca declared its independence.

Cuenca's coat of arms.   Motto: First God and then you...so wait your turn Sonny-Jim.  (n.b. I may have added that last bit)

Antonio Vallejo, the irascible and inflexible governor of Cuenca, is not best pleased.  He has woken to find the walls of the town, the king's walls, daubed with the following seditious slogan:

<<Nobles ciudadanos, prevengan las armas para la libertad nuestra y la de nuestros hijos...no queremos tirano rey>>

<< Noble citizens, arm yourselves for our liberty and that of our children...
We do not want a tyrant king>>

In the coming days he will hear rumours of rabble-rousing leaflets calling for 'liberty and not these many oppressions' circulating amongst the citizenry of the town.  His zeal against the enemies of the king will not be found wanting, and his search will be exacting and thorough, but the people of Cuenca will remain tight-lipped and the culprits of this first cry for liberty will never be found. 

This day. the 21st of march 1795, will come to be known as the day the call for independence was first proclaimed in the streets of Cuenca.

Dr. José María Vásquez de Noboa - Mayor of Cuenca

A man riding an unsaddled packhorse, blood streaming from a bayonet wound in his leg, is criss-crossing the streets of Cuenca calling out to the people, exhorting them to rise up against royalist oppression.  His name is Tomás Ordóñez and it is the 3rd of November, 1820.

A week earlier, he was in the house of his father Paulino Ordóñez (one of the men suspected of the circulation of seditious leaflets in 1795), listening to an impassioned speech calling for a revolution against the monarchist government, delivered by his mother Margarita Torres in front of a group of revolutionary conspirators. 

Spurred on by Guayaquil's almost bloodless coup on October the 9th and undettered by two previous failed attempts to liberate Cuenca, the 'patriots' are confident that they have both the support of the people and also that of a powerful and influential co-conspirator.  They agree to take action on the following Friday and that is just what they do.

A few hours prior to his blood-spattered gallop of exhortation, Tomás had entered the Plaza de Armas accompanied by 8 other 'patriots'.  In the plaza, Dr. José María Vásquez de Noboa, the mayor of Cuenca and the king's representative in the city, was proclaiming Reales Ordenes Españolas, the king's commands, accompanied by a military bodyguard.  Unbeknownst to the bodyguard, Dr Vásquez de Noboa is the influential co-conspirator who has assisted in the masterminding of the plot and helped to arm the rebels.  Tomás and his fellow patriots had drawn arms, let out a cry for freedom and charged upon the bodyguard, thereby beginning the Battle for Cuenca.

¿Was Noboa a true believer in the revolution? or ¿was this a mere act of political expediency?   If he was playing the political game he did it with consummate skill: when patriots petitioning for Quito's independence on the 10th of August 1809 were unceremoniously bundled into jail Noboa loudly voiced his opposition to the petition; and when Guayaquil declared its independence on October 9, 1820, he categorically refused to second the proclamation.   He did however allow an open meeting of the city council to discuss the ramifications of Guayaquil's independence.  ¿Convert to the revolutionary cause, longtime double-agent or Machiavellian pragmatist?  You decide. 

Following the initial skirmish in the Plaza de Armas, the patriots regrouped in Plaza San Sebastian and officially declared Cuenca's independence in front of a large gathering of the people.  As you might expect, the royalists were somewhat unimpressed by this and the two sides engaged in a series of clashes, fracases, affrays and melees in which the royalists superior arms had them slowly gaining the upper hand. 

After two days of heavy fighting, and when all seemed to be lost for the revolutionary cause, on the afternoon of the fourth of November, 1820, reinforcements arrrived from the town of Chuquipata and helped to drive the royalist forces from the town.  

Dr. José María Vásquez de Noboa, now chief of government of the Republic of Cuenca, opened his letter to General Santander, vice-president of Colombia, informing him of the victory, with the following words:

<<Los días 3 y 4 del presente fueron los de la mayor ignominia
para los agentes del despotismo.>>

<<The 3rd and 4th days of the present month were days of the greatest ignominity
for the agents of despotism.>>

At last, Cuenca had its independence and was free from the tyranny of the monarch (In fact, the city would be retaken barely a month later in a bloody battle, and face over a year of brutal repression until the arrival of Marshal Sucre's army on the 22nd of February, 1822, in the run-up to the Battle of Pichincha, would deliver a final crushing blow to the shackle of Imperialism in the city.  But let's skim over that inconvenient little detail).