With New Years Just Around the Corner

As the New Year approaches we are preparing to celebrate Ecuadorian style. The streets are filled with sidewalk vendors selling paper mache mannequins dressed in real clothes that represent almost every known political, entertainment, and cartoon character known. Why? To burn the doll on New Years eve. We are told that on New Years Eve there will be hundreds of street bonfires where people toss the mannequins into the fire. The original purpose of the tradition is to symbolically burn away the things you wish to get rid of from the previous year. Be it a habit, memories or even to symbolically remove a person from your life. But like many traditions, the real meanings has been commercialized and lost in the translations. To burn a Mickey Mouse or a Shrek mannequin is a bit of a stretch but it is the fun that counts. There is another tradition where young boys dress up in black women’s clothes and beg for money to help them mourn the loss of their "dead" mannequins husbands.