Cañar: A Year in the Highlands of Ecuador

Chapter Seven: The Meeting

chapter seven o The Meeting santiago quinde at his backstrap loom Last week, several Cañari friends, among them José Miguel and his cousin Félix, approached us to request help in organizing a meeting to talk about creating a cultural foundation. It would be a legal entity, they said, dedicated to preserving and promoting indigenous music, dance, clothing, handicrafts, rituals, medicine, and agriculture—all the cultural wealth of Cañar that remains at the turn of the twenty-first century. Our Cañari friends talked to us about this idea years ago, and we are pleased it is still 61 Cañar alive. Michael and I agreed to hold the meeting at our house at seven o’clock on Saturday night. We spent Friday in Cuenca, but early Saturday morning we catch a bus for Cañar to give Michael time to make two banana cakes for the meeting. He’s been inspired lately by the tons of bananas that appear in Cañar each week on market day, sold from the backs of trucks at the end of our street. Ecuador is the largest exporter of bananas in the world, and I suspect that some of those that don’t meet export quality standards get shipped up from the coast and dumped on local markets. Michael brought home his first ripe bunch the other day and declared them delicious. Late Saturday afternoon, cakes cooling on the table, we walk into town for supplies: large sheets of blank newsprint, markers, disposable cups, coffee , and milk. It is the first drizzly day after a long anxious wait by the farmers for the rainy season. Below a dark sky, low clouds hang at rooftop level, and the few people who are out scurry along the narrow cobblestone streets covered with shawls or plastic sheets. We arrive back home wet and cold, but by seven we have had dinner and are ready for the meeting. I’ve waxed down the dusty floors in the sala, cleared the tables, drawn a big planning calendar to hang on one wall, and taped blank newsprint sheets for notes on another. A big pot of coffee heats on the stove—already mixed with milk and lots of sugar, the way everyone likes it—and Michael’s two beautiful banana cakes are waiting on the countertop. No one comes on time, of course. Manuela and Mariana, young women in their early twenties who are studying in Cuenca, arrive first. When they knock at seven fifteen, they seem slightly chagrined to have arrived before everyone else. They greet us formally and sit down primly on chairs in the sala. I put on a Silvio Rodriguez tape and Michael serves coffee. At seven thirty José Miguel, his brother Pablo, and another cousin, Ranti, arrive wet and tired from their soccer game. Then Aunt Mariana, who assisted in the ritual limpieza of our house a few weeks ago, comes in with her three teenage children, Alexandra, Maritza, and Juan Carlos. At some point I realize that Mama Michi has slipped in. She sits on the floor, with her legs straight out and her head against the wall. She looks tired. All the women are dressed for the cold in layers of wool skirts, heavy sweaters, and black wool capes or shawls, and the room has that cozy, wetwool smell. Even for a casual meeting, the women and girls wear swaths of choker necklaces made of red and gold or black beads and dangling silver earrings, some very elaborate, and of course they all have on hats. Next to them, I feel very plain and unstylish in my khaki pants, charcoal gray 62 The Meeting sweater, and the modest two-string necklace of red beads I bought the other day in the market—my one nod to feminine attire in my new Cañar life. Michael’s banana cake and super-sweet coffee are a big hit. For most of those here tonight, coffee is a treat, but coffee with milk is real luxury. By eight about twenty people have arrived, everyone but Félix, the designated coordinator of the meeting and the one ‘‘who has all the papers,’’ as José Miguel puts it. Everyone sits patiently on our wooden benches, stools, and chairs, or on the floor, quietly chatting. Some are looking over the color photos I took the other day at the...