Ecuador Cities

When I was looking up a details about Cuenca for my last post, I came to a realization about how ridiculously long the official names of Ecuadorian cities are.
In truth, Cuenca is just a "short version" of the city's name.  Full name: Santa Ana de los cuatro rios de Cuenca.  Translation: Santa Ana of the Four Rivers of Cuenca.  Most cities in Ecuador are similar in keeping very long names.  For example, I live in San Juan de Cumbaya, right outside of San Francisco de Quito, and I helped on a medical brigade in Santo Domingo de los Tsachilas.  Notice the trend of including the name of the Catholic patron saints in the name of each city.  If that's not enough, most of the original city names had "Muy Noble y Muy Leal Ciudad de..." before their titles.  I find that ironic because "Very noble and loyal city" doesn't really fit with the whole revolution and independence from Spain part that happened a few years later.

Speaking of independence, Ecuador does have an independence day (August 10), but the real celebrations are on  the independence days of the three main cities of Ecuador (Guayaquil - October 9, Quito - May 24, and you already know Cuenca's).

As if Ecuador doesn't have enough holidays with its 4 official independence days, the days on which the principle cities were founded by the Spanish are often celebrated as well, albeit on a regional level.  Personally, I'm looking forward to Quito's founding on December 6, but there are also celebrations in Guayaquil on July 25, in Cuenca on April 12, and probably in some other cities on other dates as well.

This trend toward regionalism is important for understanding Ecuadorian culture.  You can tell just by the way a person talks whether they are from the coast (Guayaquil), Quito, Cuenca, or an indigenous group.  Quiteños call people from Guayaquil monos (monkeys), and the monos respond with something like "potato eaters."  Diet, agriculture, and industry change dramatically when one moves east from the Pacific Coast to the Andean mountain highlands to the Amazon jungle.  While Ecuador might be about the size of Colorado, the regional diversity noted in the distinctions between cities goes far beyond that which is noted in any one US state.