We have been trying to find out the schedule of church festivities since we got here in October. Everyone we ask says they don’t know, but “you might try xxx” and each of those has come up empty. We finally had a breakthrough today, and now have the schedule!
Regina responded to my GringoTree request back when we were still in California, saying she was interested too, and might have an idea of where to get such a list. We got together for lunch our first week here, but she had to go back to Chicago for awhile to handle some family matters, and didn’t have time then. She offered to help us when she got back if we had not already found what we were after.
We got together today and went to the Catholic Archdiocese to ask. Nobody there speaks any English, and our Spanish was never good enough to make the breakthrough. Regina is an American that lived in Mexico for 23 years before moving to Cuenca three years ago, and speaks excellent Spanish. Her language skill, plus her persistence and her charming personality got us into the main office, where some more encouragement from Regina got an office staff to open up and give us the Golden Keys.
As it turns out, they didn’t have this information earlier anyway. They had only started gathering the information from the parishes in the last couple weeks. They are gathering the info to put on a web site they are now creating. The web site is entirely in Spanish, and doesn’t yet have this info, but here is a source to bookmark for the future if you are interested: http://www.arquicuencaec.org/
I have three pages of printout from the visit today. I will be scanning those and making them available on my web site for download in the next day or so. In the meantime, here are the church festivities between now and early January, when we return to California.
Pase del Nino Parroquial
Dec 16 at 14:00 — San Rogue
Dec 22 at 18:00 — San Alfonso
Dec 23 at 10:00 — Nstra Sra Del Carmen / V. del Bronce
Dec 23 at 09:00 — San Luis de Gonzaga / Quinta Chica
Dec 24 from 18:00 to 20:00 — Nuestra Senora de Fatima celebrates Christmas and Pase del Nino
Dec 25 at 10:00 — San Francisco
Other Festivities
Dec 24 — Pase del Nino Viejo. This is the biggest celebration of the moving Jesus statue. Details of time and route can be found on http://cuencanewsdigest.com/e19-82.htm.
Dec 24 — prior to Midnight Mass, many churches will have nativity scenes and other displays in front of the churches.
Dec 28 — Cuenca’s version of April Fools day. When the kids get out of school, they start playing pranks, and floats and costumes can be seen all afternoon. At 18:00, a parade starts near Solano y Huayna-Capac, works its way over the Benigno Malo bridge, and then I kinda lost track of the route conversation going on… The parade will have floats and people in clown costumes, men dressed as women, etc.
Dec 31 — People burn effigies at midnight, symbolizing burning away all of the old year’s problems. The effigies are put up in the afternoon, and contents occur in many places around town for the best effigy. The best places to see this are at San Rogue, San Sebastian, and “the blacksmith street” (along De Las Herrerias).
Jan 6 — Feast of the King Baby is a major celebration in Cuenca. The parade starts at 7:00 (AM!) at the church at Tarquis y Simon Bolivar. We were warned that there will be lots of people, with many starting to camp out at midnight to claim their viewing spots.
