Confronting Catholicism in Cuenca

Before coming to Ecuador one fact that had been impressed upon me was how strongly Catholic a country it was. In fact 95% of the population declares themselves as Catholic. As well homosexuality has only been decriminalized in the last 10 years, and birth control is still hard to find and often expensive. It was with this backdrop that my friend and I visited the most Catholic of Ecuadorian cities, Cuenca.

My arrival in Cuenca was anything but ceremonial. Taking the overnight bus we arrived in Cuenca at exactly 4:00 a.m., my stomach having been rearranged by going over speed bumps at what seemed like 100 km/h. As we entered the bus station a sign overhead warned us not to enter, with of all things, our goats!

Arriving as we did, and given the fact that it was the city’s annual holiday, left us with the problem of finding a hostel with an empty room. Fittingly it seemed, our arrival paralleled in some way with the nativity story. Luckily we had met a friendly German on the bus who had a friend with a hostel room. We took a cab to the hostel but were told there was no way they’d let us in. After some pleading that we couldn’t sleep on the street they let us in, but, we’d have to sleep on the floor.

Curling up with my backpack, I tried my best to get to sleep on the hostel floor. Just as I was nodding off I was awoken by exclamations of confusion. One person sleeping on a bed had woken up and completely stepped on my friend. Then he noticed there was another person on the floor. Realizing the situation he graciously offered us his place on the bed, although the two of us still had to share it with one other person. Still, it was an improvement from the floor.

A few hours later we woke up with the hopes of sneaking out of the hostel before they made us pay. Unfortunately we got caught and had to pay $2.50(regular $4.50 a night), for 4 hours of sleeping on the floor!

After taking a day to find a real hostel and orient ourselves, we visited the main Cathedral of Cuenca. When constructed there were plans for it to hold 10,000 people and be the biggest in South America. Halfway through the architects concluded it would be unsafe to build any higher. Thus the cathedral remains oddly half finished. Walking through the huge ornate doors I was struck by the sight of the front of the sanctuary. The reflection off it was so bright it seemed to be covered in gold. What parts of the cathedral they had built had been spared no expense.

The sight of the sanctuary was so impressive that I was thrown into an intense religious revelation. I saw God. Literally. Along one side of the cathedral was a shrine that included a statue of God, complete with Jesus sitting at his right hand. (I asked just to make sure). I’m not sure how they knew what God looked like, or with what motive the statue was made, but hopefully they portrayed him with at least some accuracy.

My next night in Cuenca I happened upon a completely different side of the city’s character. Walking down the street I randomly ran into a rock concert taking place in a public square. Despite being so strongly Catholic, Cuenca is also the rock and roll capital of Ecuador. The band I saw combined intense heavy metal guitar with flute and saxophone accompaniment, kind of like seeing Iron Maiden perform with Jethro Tull. The mostly young crowd was dressed in typical punk clothing and moshed their hearts out at the front of the stage. Perhaps Cuenca’s strongly Catholic character has also produced an equally strong counter-culture.

Leaving Cuenca I felt as if I had experienced some of its Catholic character, but not overtly. The downtown, although historical, had obviously geared itself towards tourists and many of them had been there for the annual holiday. It’s often hard to understand a place after living there for four months, let alone visiting it for four days.

Of course I forgot that I still had to leave Cuenca on the bus. Long bus trips in Ecuador always have at least one movie showing, sometimes more. On one occasion I had been forced to watch Air Force One (good movie), followed by Air Force Two (I wanted to shoot myself), followed by an action movie starring Dolph Lundgren (even worse). On this bus however, we were shown a movie whose sole purpose was to convince people of the evils of abortion.

Normally I would have watched this sort of movie with an open mind and an attempt to understand both sides given how sensitive and controversial the topic is. Trapped on a bus and forced to watch this movie with no warning was a horrible way to approach this topic. To make it worse the movie seemed so decidedly anti-abortion that it bordered on propaganda.

At the end, the movie presented a table comparing North American deaths in certain wars with the number of abortions performed since it was legalized. This was distorted by the fact that the bigger wars (WWI and II) were not fought in North America and that the United States only entered into the war halfway through. It was also claimed that since legalization there had been 20 million abortions in North America, a number that I knew to be false. (Source: the book Freakenomics)

Ironically the abortion movie was followed by a bloody action flick starring none other than Dolph Lundgren, which had one person being shot approximately every two seconds!

In hindsight I should have seen it coming. The bus line we traveled on was called Santa (Saint) and at the front the bus had a big poster of Nuestra Dama de el Cisne (Our Lady of the Swan). Whatever feelings I had of having “missed” part of Cuenca were erased on the bus ride home.