Tababela, September 24, 2018

In a steep little town near the airport, a scree of cornfields and plaster houses, Tababela and its name of a dancing pompom, rolling toward Quito like a tumbleweed, caught by surprise in its countryside by the brand-new airport, transformed into a dormitory for travellers – in Tababela it’s Sunday and it’s the village fête.

At the sports ground strings of sausages smoke on the barbecues. The crowds stuff themselves and jostle. On a stage musicians pluck Andean chords, season propitious songs. La Reina de Tababela is present, hair in corkscrews, sash across her chest, tall and capsizing on her plastic heels.

In the streets around, the muffled music resounds. Men with moustaches get drunk on beer and whisky in front of the tiendas where they stock up. Tipsy they stagger on the slope of the afternoon, dead drunk they wallow in the dusk, slump at the corner of a saving low wall, snore great ethylic dreams: their heads freewheel down the slopes, stumble on blades that send them back up, under the great glass sky of their world under a bell jar. They fall into happy holes, and hear, muted, the clash of cymbals.

They dream of Yamor, perhaps, the festival of corn. Rows of dancers in alpaca harem pants, enormous masks jiggling on short legs – like the little men that children draw, a big head with no body from which the limbs sprout. A stocky man comes down the street. Against his belly he clutches a big trophy, as a niño hugs his teddy bear.

– El trofeo del mejor bailarín de la fiesta, my host, Felipe, tells me.

It walks with a heavy step, the glory of Tababela. And night falls on these heights, people roll home to their dens, the planes drop behind the fields, in this world turned upside down…