We are early people. All four of us in this immediate family are early people. We put the "immediate" in family every morning. One of our kids is always up around 6, which is really great -- and you never know which one it will be. Sometimes, when we hear a child foot-slapping his or her way across the tiles towards our room in the early morning, we play "guess those footsteps." Kerry has gotten very good at it. I get up grumbling and make some coffee.
So I don't think we've made it to midnight on New Year's Eve for at least a decade. Usually we do a countdown at 10 o'clock, maybe call it a Brazilian new year, except without costumes or samba marches, or anything Brazilian really. We toast, and then we shuffle off to bed.
When we started hearing about Ecuadorian Fin de Año celebrations, I thought, this is the year I make it to midnight. The Ecuadorian tradition is to erect big cardboard, plastic and papier mache effigies, stuff them with explosives, and then ignite them on the countdown to the new year. And every block has at least one display of life-sized cardboard doll-bombs. That sounds awesome!
The effigies represent local and national politicians as well as popular cartoons and super-heroes, and a mish-mash of random representations of human vice and folly. The whole thing has a carnival-esque feel in that it subverts the dominant power-structures by pointing out its (many) faults -- that, and at the same time, people run around in masks and wigs and costumes having a grand old time. Ecuadorians apparently started this tradition more than 200 years ago, and it's since spread to other Latin American countries.
The symbolism is pretty obvious: by burning these viejos -- or "old ones" as the effigies are called -- people are torching the bad stuff from the previous year. It's a purification rite of sorts. In addition, many of these life-sized dioramas display hand-scribbled litanies of bad things and misfortune that have occurred during the year. And all of this sheit is heaped onto the blaze at midnight. The final touch is to leap over the cardboard bonfires, which when loaded with fire-crackers (and people loaded with drink), might not be the most prudent course of action. Depending on your timing, you might get a real new year's surprise.
But that's not the only tradition of reversal and renewal. Men and boys also dress up like women -- very busty, lusty, and scantily clad "women" -- and go around harassing people for spare change. This significance is a bit more elusive -- perhaps it's a yearly attempt to become more intimate with their feminine sides. Or maybe it's something deeper, I'm not sure.
Regardless of the meaning, these guys go at it with full gusto. By 9 or 10 o'clock the streets in the center of Otavalo are packed, both with pedestrians and cars. Many cars, incidentally, also have smaller effigies strapped to their hoods and roofs -- the party does not stop at the sidewalk. On any given block you can see these boy-girls blocking each car as it comes into an intersection by hooting and gyrating, and even simulating sex with the hood of the car for a minute before heading to the driver's side and collecting the toll. Often, revelers pull a rope taught across the road to stop the cars as they pull up.
The drivers for their part seem to enjoy the spectacle, happily forking over some coins for the show. Usually these guys have a girl on the sidewalk who is plying them with beer the whole time. The young cross-dressers who are not stopping traffic wander amongst the crowd, often embracing other young men in sandwich fashion, humping them like dogs, and then running off giggling. It goes without saying, that this is a really good time.
Fortunately, I was able to avoid being groped when I headed back downtown to document the chaos. Unfortunately, sleepiness got the best of me, even after two cokes. I could only take so much wandering around drunk people, maybe since I wasn't reveling with friends. Otavalo was already too far gone for me, so I wandered back home, and happily slid into bed.
As a post-script, I'd figured that there would be piles of smoking ash everywhere around town the next morning, but this was not the case at all! Road crews -- and a fleet of fire-trucks -- had made quick work of the debris, and the streets were relatively clear. The only thing left behind were half a dozen dudes sleeping off their reveries on the sides of the roads.
Maybe next year we'll make it on East Coast time.
No comments:
Post a Comment