Rain and the end of blackouts promise a noisy New Year’s celebration and hopes for a brighter 2025

By Liam Higgins

Less than two months ago, cities around Ecuador, including Cuenca, were considering prohibitions on New Year’s Eve fireworks and even banning celebrations altogether. The country was suffering from an historic drought, prompting lengthy electric and water service suspensions. To the west of Cuenca, thousands of hectares of the Cajas Mountains were on fire, filling the air with smoke.

Dummies go up in flames on a Cuenca street during last year’s New Year’s Eve celebration.

What a difference a few weeks make! The rains returned in late November and haven’t stopped since. Power and water service was restored. The level of the rivers and reservoirs that power the country’s hydroelectric turbines rose rapidly and the fire danger was doused in most areas.

Since mid-December, there has been no talk of a ban on fireworks. The official word? Let the party begin!

Tonight, when clocks strike midnight in Ecuador, fireworks will fill the sky in most communities and revelers wearing yellow underwear for good luck will pop bottles of champagne, jump over burning piles of monigotes that represent the old year, and kiss their partners — not necessary in that order.

In Cuenca, it will be hard to miss the street vendors circulating among the crowds selling yellow underwear and New Year’s masks. They will also be peddling good luck grapes.

Año Viejo masks for sale on Simon Bolivar.

A common story traces the tradition of the twelve lucky grapes, or uvas de la suerte, to grape farmers in Alicante, Spain, who cannily suggested the idea when they had a surplus harvest to unload in the early 1900s. But according to food writer Jeff Koehler, newspaper articles about the tradition from the 1880s suggest it developed from Madrid’s bourgeoisie copying the French custom of drinking champagne and eating grapes on New Year’s Eve.

Either way, Spanish tradition eventually became a superstition that spread to Central and South America. Eating one grape at each of midnight’s 12 clock chimes guarantees you a lucky year — if and only if you simultaneously ruminate on their significance. (Each grape represents an upcoming month.) If you fail to conscientiously finish your grapes by the time the clock stops chiming, you’ll face misfortune in the new year.

The origin of the Ecuadorian tradition of jumping three times over burning año viejo minigotes is widely debated, with a variety of vague explanations offered up by historians. What is clear is that the jump carries risks since some dummies are stuffed with fireworks that can go off mid-jump. Celebrants, especially who have had too much to drink, frequently misjudge the jump and land in the fire. Some especially unfortunate jumpers have been known to receive pyrotechnic enemas.

Emergency rooms of Cuenca hospitals are prepared for heavy traffic in the early hours of January 1.

The only potential dampener to tonight’s festivities is — you guessed it — rain. The weatherman is predicting more rain today and through the first week of January.