Jueves, 17/11/2016: Prehistoric Cuenca, San Francisco Plaza update, Obituaries for meat

Hola, Todos – 

Pagina cultural – 

Today’s (Thurs.) agenda events – 

National meeting – A national meeting of art students will be at the Department of Art at the U. of Cuenca Fri. y sábado.   There will be round table discussions on art education, cultural management and forms of student organization.

Premios – The awards ceremony for the winners of the Cuarto Concurso Infantil de Dibujo (4th Childrens’ Drawing Contest) will be today at 18:30 in la Quinta Lucrecia.

Poemario – “Obituarios de la carne” (Obituaries of meat – I guess that’s suitable.  If it’s meat it’s dead and deserving of an obituary.) by Gabriel Cisneros, national VP of the CCE will be presented today at 19:00 in the Sala de Conciertos de la Casa de la Cultura (CCE).

Visita – Luang Phi Pasura, a monk from Thailand, in Ramdas-kundalini yoga, gave workshops in meditation and empowerment today at 6:00 and 8:00 in the Plaza de El Otorongo.  (Sunrise services?)

Articles about – 

Bienal – The Bienal de Cuenca will open on viernes, 25/11.  Works that have arrived are being mounted, and other pieces are on their way to be mounted by the artists. Other activities are advancing such as the financing with credit from Foncultura which is complex and slow.  The city has put the the contract for event signage on their Public Contracts Portal.  The Bienal directors will meet as soon as possible “para definir modalidad” (to define modality – I’m having trouble understanding the concept of modality in English so translating this isn’t going to be real iffy.) for the prizes (the criteria for judging the works and deciding the winner? or deciding what the prizes will be?).

Prehispanic Cuenca– “Guapondelig, Tomebamba, Cuenca” by Alfredo Lozano, Doctor of Architecture, will be presented tomorrow at 19:00 in the ex Escuela Central.  The title refers to the name of this city under the Cañari, Inca, and Spanish and the book tells of 3 moments in each of these phases of history.  The author’s first book, “Ciudad prehispana, forma y símbolo” (Prehispanic city, form and symbol) talks about prehispanic ordering of territory including cosmogonic, astronomic, mathematical, ritual and other considerations.  The author used an interdisciplinary approach to his research since looking at it from only a classic historical or archaeological viewpoint is limiting and ethnocentric.  He also said that taking a western viewpoint to the the study of aboriginal peoples often falsifies or makes the original history invisible.  (We all know that the victor winds up the hero who writes the history.)

“Hilando Vida” (Spinning Life)– Yolanda García´s exhibit is at the Catedral Vieja.  She “paints” with yarn in a form that’s neither weaving nor embroidery.

Digital art – The “Collección Infinitiva” exhibit by artists from Ecuador and Argentina can be seen online, starting Fri. in the Galería Subsuelo 2 in the CCE (Lus Cordero y Pres. Córdova 1st floor of the Galería Proceso).  (So you go to a gallery and see the art on a computer screen?  Couldn’t you just do that from home and skip the wine, cheese and crackers?)

Otras cosas –  

Titular – Luto nacional por muerte de Sixto (National mourning over death of Sixto) – Sixto Durán Ballén, president of Ecuador from 1992-96) died on martes in his home at age 95.  (Luto – mourning – is your word for the day.  So the next time an Ecuadorian asks you to explain Trump, tell them you’re en luto and still waiting for the US to become a true democracy where each vote is counted.)  He was an ex-mayor of Quito, an ex-minister of the state and ex-assemblyman.  He was trained as an architect at Columbia University and worked on the rebuilding of Ambato after it was destroyed in an earthquake in 1948.

San Francisco Plaza – In 2013, the Banco de Desarrollo del Ecuador (BDE – Development Bank of Ecuador) approved a loan of $6,857,569 for the improvement project and to date has disbursed $3,364,000.  It will not disburse the rest of the money because the scope of the project has changed since 2013.  The BDE wants to see and evaluate plans, specs, cost estimates and business plans before it will release the second phase of the loan.  The City wants to move the merchants to El Otorongo during construction.  The Otavalans don’t like the idea and want to be relocated in the surrounding streets.  (The same streets with the 18″ wide sidewalks? Physically, they’d probably fit on the sidewalks around the New Cathedral, but then where do the Corpus Cristi vendors go?  No wonder this project’s almost 60 years old with not one shovel’s worth of dirt moved yet.)

Elections – Cynthia Viteri, candidate for the Partido Social Cristiano (PSC – Christian Socialist Party), and her running mate Mauricio Pozo as well as the Alianza País candidates, Lenin Moreno and Jorge Glas registered with the CNE yesterday.  The lists of candidates are due by 18:00 tomorrow.  Various parties and movements are also registering their National Assembly candidates.

Voting – There are 5 ways to find your polling place.  Go to the web page of the Consejo Nacional Electoral: www.cne.gob.ec, go to the Delegación Electoral del Azuay (Tarqui between Sangurima y La Mar), there is a phone app at https://app05.cne.lgov.ec/lugarvotacion2017/ (At least I think that’s the app – it was shown in a different paragraph.), there will be information in the newspapers, and information tables in areas with lots of people like shopping centers and universities. (I like living in a country that is actively getting people to vote instead of trying to disenfranchise them.)

Seminario sobre Política Social (Seminar on Social Policy) – The seminar will be tomorrow and sábado starting at 8:30 in the treatro Carlos Cueva Tamariz.

Deportes –

Circuito atlético 5K – This 5K run to benefit a Therapeutic and Occupational Center for Autism will be on 27/11 at 8:00.  Register at Multi Plaza (Elia Liut s/n y Gil Ramírez Dávalos), FamaLab (Edificio Cámara de Comercio, across the street from parque De La Madre), or Imprenta Cuenca Graff (Pio Bravo 7-65 between Borrero y Luis Cordero).  Cost: $7.00 for adults and $5.00 for kids.

And that´s all for today so Hasta Mañana –

Jeanne