Where’s the grime  

     Upon arrival everything looked dirty and disorganized because everything has been cleaned and organized differently.  The open garage door body shop, welding shops, wood working spaces, tire stores, etc. look really dirty.  In the US we have big parking lots and enter nice lobbies.  We keep the gnar stuff in the back.  In Ecuador, everything is on display, both the beautiful and that which would remain hidden in the US. This is an economy that is run by individuals and small businesses rather than department stores and warehouses.   

    Same is true in the markets.  They are a maze of individual stalls with piles of fruit and vegetables, huge bags of bulk dry goods, stacks of chickens and fish, hanging pigs and goats.  One row has mountains of avocados.  Another row, buckets of potatoes.  The actual market looks dirty, the external structure a bit worse for the wear.  Busses and taxis from all over town stop in at the market because it’s pulsing with people bringing things to sell and taking things they’ve bought.  This makes the road nearby busy and gray and gives the air an unpleasant diesel odor.  Also, with the greasy shops open for viewing, the aesthetic suffers.  But the produce!!!   Stacks of pineapples, bananas in 4 forms, granadia,  dragonfruit, passionfruit, strawberries, grapes, limes, mangos, papayas, watermelons, plus piles of greens and veggies— a literal farmer’s market without the swanky Saturday park context with the guitarist and the micro greens juice truck.  The food goes for good prices negotiated with real farmers.  In the US we also have grimey warehouses with stacks of boxes and pallets.  We just don’t see those places unless we have to use the bathroom in the back of the supermarket past the clear vinyl slats that hang down like a mystic’s beaded doorway.   Here the whole store is the back of the grocery store.  

    In the city, all houses and buildings are gated and protected with electrified wires or barbed wire fences.  The above ground electrical wires that connect in a twisted nest of knots that would be fit for a sci-fi robot bird. This ubiquitos imagery triggered something primal and negative that was probably fed to me by 1980’s mainstream media reports on guerrilla warfare in Colombia.  These scenes unveiled a spot of superiority and judgement inside of me.  I approached this part of myself with curiosity and asked “what else about this land and it’s people have I perhaps unfairly judged?”    

    In an attempt to take a more objective standpoint, I began to wonder how much of the grime that I saw required money to remove or to remedy.  I started walking with some awareness about exactly what it was that struck me as dirty and then asked myself if money was needed to fix it.  I concluded, after watching shop owners scrub the sidewalks with a coarse bristle brush and after visiting many bathrooms, that much is in disrepair but mostly owners take pride in their shops, people take pride in the state of their possessions, and people take more pride in their personal appearance than I do.  

    I think that much is in disrepair because, in order to save money, original installation quality is low.  It shouldn’t be a big surprise that things break down and don’t get replaced.   Also, there’s no adverse weather here other than rain so houses don’t need to be as tightly constructed.  Any day here the forecast is for 68 degrees, partly cloudy with a chance of rain.  In Alaska we spent a lot of money sealing the air gaps between our living spaces and the attic to prevent ice damming on our roof.  Part of our roof here is made of glass.  In the US we talk about insulation and triple pane glass.  Here as long as there is a roof, who really cares about the rest?

    That said, I’ve been inside enough buildings now to know that many are hiding beautiful spaces behind those gates and wires.  I’ve turned off of dirt roads past street dogs and onto equestrian training centers with terra-cotta roofed stables and clubhouses.  I’ve sat in enough open courtyards of 400 year-old buildings filled with plants to know that my first impression was wrong.

    After some time passed, I began to get accustomed to the grime of the markets and metal- working stores, to look past bits of broken concrete or bent and rusty bleacher seats and playground slides.  All of the sudden a whole world of good taste and pride peeked at me from behind the walls.  It broke my heart how much my own prejudice sullied the truth, how much of the grime I believed that I saw was bias.

    I became aware of the extraordinary effort Cuenca has made to make beautiful their concrete walls.  So I began taking pictures of the murals and mosaics and graffiti.  I rode my bike all over town and stopped to admire and frame this public art with the lens in my phone.  A couple of these pictures required that I wait for a window long enough to stand in the middle of a busy street just to capture the whole piece.  Many of these murals are very large.  In Anchorage, we could use some of the energy that went into these pieces.  The murals posted here are by no means exhaustive, they’re just most of the ones that I’ve seen.  I hope you enjoy them.