Financial Times of London; Weekend Magazine Feature<\/p>\n
January 13, 2007<\/small><\/p>\nThe Last Straw<\/h2>\n
By Hal Weitzman<\/em><\/p>\n About 18,000 of some of the finest Panama hats in the world are piled in a\u00a0locked, caged-off corner of the storeroom at the Homero Ortega factory in\u00a0Cuenca, Ecuador, a picturesque colonial town in the province of Azuay in the\u00a0southern Ecuadorean highlands, 2,350 metres above sea level. As I inhale the\u00a0intoxicatingly sweet smell of straw, Ivan Maldonado, the company\u2019s\u00a0marketing manager, unlocks the padlock. It feels like being let into the inner\u00a0sanctum of some holy temple, and we talk in tones of hushed reverence. The\u00a0difference between these Panamas and the hundreds of thousands of hats stacked\u00a0in the rest of the storage area is immediately clear. The rows of weaving are\u00a0perfectly straight\u2014and so tight that some of the hats look as if they are\u00a0made of off-white cotton.<\/p>\n For almost 30 years, one of Ecuador\u2019s most famous hat producers has\u00a0been building up this stockpile, aware that the knowledge of how to make the\u00a0very best Panama hats\u2014the superfinos\u2014is being lost. These superbly\u00a0woven specimens are meant to extend the life of the company, a preparation for\u00a0a time when production of the Panama hat is no more.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the most important stockpile of superfinos in the\u00a0world,\u201d says Maldonado. \u201cWe have it because we have to recognize\u00a0that the art of weaving like this is dying out.\u201d<\/p>\n A little bigger than New Zealand, Ecuador is one of South America\u2019s\u00a0smaller countries, but it contains a remarkably diverse geography: Amazon\u00a0rainforest in the east, the Andean highland ridge in the centre, a tropical\u00a0coast in the west and, 965km out in the Pacific, the rich biodiversity of the\u00a0Galapagos Islands.<\/p>\n I am here to investigate the curious yet imminent death of one of the\u00a0country\u2019s most emblematic products: a signature of old\u2014fashioneddebonair elegance; the headwear of US presidents, European leaders, English\u00a0cricket umpires and spies the world over; the hat worn by Churchill, Hemingway,\u00a0Edward VII and Al Capone.<\/p>\n The internet and the rise of the global market should have been the saviour\u00a0of the Panama. Instead, globalisation appears about to seal its fate: most\u00a0experts agree that within 20 years an Ecuadorean will weave the last-ever\u00a0traditionally made Panama hat.<\/p>\n In Ecuador they don\u2019t call them Panamas. They call them sombreros de\u00a0paja toquilla\u2014hats woven from the straw of the toquilla plant, which\u00a0grows in the swamps near the country\u2019s central coast. The origin of the\u00a0misnomer comes from the hat\u2019s widespread use by the workers who built the\u00a0Panama Canal from 1904 to 1914. The nomenclature is not merely fodder for\u00a0afternoon television quiz shows: it is also partly responsible for the\u00a0hats\u2019 demise. The headwear has been a paja toquilla hat for far longer\u00a0than it\u2019s been a Panama\u2014going back at least to the Spanish conquest\u00a0in the 16th century\u2014but the naming anomaly has made it difficult to\u00a0prevent other countries from producing hats and marketing them as Panamas.<\/p>\n As in many other industries, the biggest threat to Ecuador\u2019s Panama\u00a0hat makers is China. No matter that China\u2019s \u201cstraw\u201d hats are\u00a0actually woven from paper\u2014few consumers would notice the difference. They\u00a0are cheaper than the real thing, look as good to most people and are more\u00a0flexible. Tom Miller, an American author who has written about the plight of\u00a0the Panama, says of Chinese hats: \u201cThey have every advantage except\u00a0authenticity.\u201d<\/p>\n China is the world\u2019s top \u201cstraw\u201d hat producer, exporting\u00a0more than $1bn-worth a year\u2014more than 40 per cent of world demand.\u00a0Ecuador, in 34th place, exports $2.3m-worth\u2014about one-10th of 1 per cent\u00a0of the global market.<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot compete with the Chinese on price,\u201d says Alicia\u00a0Ortega, the elegant daughter of Homero Ortega and now the company\u2019s\u00a0president. \u201cWe can only compete on quality.\u201d<\/p>\n But Chinese encroachment is helped by another important factor\u2014one\u00a0that also has a lot to do with globalisation. Young people in Ecuador, as inmany poor countries, do not aspire to follow their parents into traditional\u00a0occupations such as hat making. Nowadays, the South American dream is to Kurt Dorfzaun\u2014who heads Homero Ortega\u2019s rival K.\u00a0Dorfzaun\u2014made the opposite journey. Fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s, he\u00a0ended up in Cuenca and built his uncle\u2019s company into Ecuador\u2019s\u00a0biggest Panama-hat exporter. Now 83, he has seen the industry slowly fade from\u00a0the glory days of the 1940s and 1950s, when no self-respecting person would\u00a0leave the house without a hat. In heavily German\u2014accented English, he\u00a0explains how much things have changed: \u201cAn importer from Madrid called me\u00a0and said: \u2018We need more hats!\u2019 So I said to him, \u2018Put an\u00a0advert in the paper\u2014you have more weavers there than we do\u00a0here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Some 23 per cent of Ecuador\u2019s 13 million people are estimated to live\u00a0abroad, many of them without documentation. Cuenca, Ecuador\u2019s\u00a0third-largest city, has been particularly affected by migration. A census a few\u00a0years ago calculated the city had 400,000 inhabitants. The real figure is\u00a0thought to be about 250,000, as people did not want to admit to government\u00a0officials that their relatives were living abroad illegally.<\/p>\n As a result, Cuenca\u2019s employment rate is high\u201460 per cent,\u00a0compared with 37 per cent in Guayaquil, Ecuador\u2019s biggest city, and 46\u00a0per cent in Quito, its capital. The city is buzzing with illegal Colombian and\u00a0Peruvian immigrants, but local employers complain of the lack of skilled\u00a0labour. And residents say the pull of joining relatives abroad remains\u00a0strong.<\/p>\n Rafael Correa, a radical leftwinger who will be sworn in as Ecuador\u2019s\u00a0president on Monday, campaigned on a promise to create a ministry for migrants\u00a0and set aside six congressional seats to represent them. Some of his strongest\u00a0support came from Cuenca.<\/p>\n Most toquilla straw hats do not end up as \u201ctraditional\u201d Panamas.\u00a0Instead, the vast majority of the hats woven in Ecuador are shipped unshaped,\u00a0and blocked in the country where they are sold\u2014ending up as Mexican\u00a0sombreros, cowboy hats (Stetson and Resistol, both US hatmakers, are big\u00a0purchasers) or ladies millinery.<\/p>\n Demand for genuine Ecuadorean Panamas had been falling for many years, as\u00a0hat-wearing has become less common and the baseball cap more ubiquitous. In the\u00a0past year, however, the decline appears to have halted. Retailers even report\u00a0that at the very top end of the market, demand may be on the rise. While the\u00a0hat has yet to shed its somewhat stuffy image, there are signs that as\u00a0awareness has grown of the skilled artisanship needed to make Panama hats, so\u00a0has the appetite of consumers for finos and superfinos.<\/p>\n Corpei, the Ecuadorean exporters\u2019 association, is working to get\u00a0everyone in the industry\u2014weavers, small producer groups, factories and\u00a0exporters\u2014to co-operate. Alicia Ortega is sceptical. \u201cIt sounds\u00a0good, but this has failed so many times before,\u201d she says wearily.<\/p>\n Ivan Maldonado agrees. \u201cThe weavers resent us,\u201d he says.\u00a0\u201cThey hear about hats being sold for thousands of dollars and they think\u00a0we\u2019re exploiting them. But we have to clean, finish and commercialise the\u00a0hats\u2014and we don\u2019t determine the final price at which they\u2019re\u00a0sold.\u201d<\/p>\n Animosities permeate the Panama hat industry. A longstanding personal feud\u00a0between Kurt Dorfzaun and Homero Ortega continues, seven years after the\u00a0latter\u2019s death, preventing the sector\u2019s two biggest exporters from\u00a0working together. The companies also complain about the preponderance of\u00a0middlemen\u2014from comisionistas, who go from village to village buying hats,\u00a0to exporters and distributors, whom they accuse of jacking up the price at the\u00a0other end. The multi-tiered structure means that while some very fine hats are\u00a0sold for $10,000 and up, the artisans who make them rarely receive more than a\u00a0few hundred dollars per piece.<\/p>\n With some hats taking months to weave, many weavers and their children have\u00a0calculated that they can earn more money fishing or picking flowers\u2014or in\u00a0virtually any other type of steady employment.<\/p>\n The road north out of Cuenca is punctuated with posters warning about the\u00a0dangers of migration. \u201cIf you are going to leave, inform\u00a0yourself\u2014people smuggling is a crime,\u201d says one. Another shows a\u00a0picture of an overcrowded boat sinking. \u201cDon\u2019t let your dreams sink\u00a0in the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n In Azogues, a town of about 28,000 some 30km north-east of Cuenca, the signs\u00a0of migration are everywhere. Betty Ruiz, who is showing me round on behalf of a\u00a0local weavers\u2019 foundation, says that five years ago the association had\u00a0500 members. Now it has 200. All are women: the men have mostly left for the\u00a0US.<\/p>\n There is furious construction activity and the hillside neighbourhoods Maria Bertha Azuero, one of the weavers we visit, is working in the main\u00a0room of one of the villas whose garish exterior belies an empty cement\u00a0interior. She explains that the house belongs to her brothers, who are working\u00a0in Chicago. She says that no, they do not intend to return. \u201cSo why do\u00a0they need the house?\u201d I ask. \u201cThey\u2019re illegal\u00a0immigrants,\u201d Azuero says. \u201cThey could be deported any\u00a0day.\u201d<\/p>\n Like most of those produced in Azuay, Maria\u2019s hats are of cheap\u00a0quality. She makes four a week and sells them to a comisionista for $4\u00a0each\u2014her only source of income. Like the other weavers we visit, she says\u00a0that her children are not interested in learning how to weave. They are\u00a0students at the local technical college.<\/p>\n At the end of our day together, Ruiz admits that she too once tried to\u00a0leave. Four years ago she saved up enough money to buy a plane ticket to New\u00a0York. \u201cThey wouldn\u2019t let me in,\u201d she says\u00a0self\u2014consciously. \u201cI lived for five days on a bench in JFK airport.\u00a0Then they deported me.\u201d<\/p>\n If Azuay is now the production centre of the Panama hat industry, the\u00a0province of Manabi, on Ecuador\u2019s central coast, is its spiritual home.\u00a0The town of Montecristi, where hats from local villages are cleaned, finished\u00a0and sold on, is to Panama hat lovers what Havana is to cigar aficionados.<\/p>\n While the mountains of Azuay are verdant, the thin air frequently broken by\u00a0sudden downpours, Manabi is hot, dusty and steamy. In the highlands, the\u00a0Spanish sounds as if it contains little but consonants; on the coast, vowels\u00a0dominate. The archetypal highlander is indigenous, the coastal resident\u00a0mixed-race. In the mountains people view the lowlanders as uncultured and\u00a0disorganised; on the coast people say residents of the highlands are obstinate\u00a0and lazy. Mountain dwellers are generally thought of as more conservative and\u00a0less hedonistic than people on the coast, but when it comes to elections, the\u00a0former votes left and the latter, right.<\/p>\n This profound regional, social and political divide has aggravated the\u00a0Panama hat industry\u2019s seeming inability to save itself.<\/p>\n I travel to Manta, South America\u2019s most western port and\u00a0Manabi\u2019s biggest town, with Claudio, the diminutive owner of a\u00a0clapped-out taxi who tests his decrepit Toyota\u2019s suspension by\u00a0approaching speed bumps at breakneck velocity, breaking ineffectively half a\u00a0second before the car is launched into the air.<\/p>\n Montecristi is a grubby and unattractive pueblo like a thousand other South\u00a0American coastal towns. Manta, once a parish of Montecristi, now dwarfs its\u00a0more famous neighbour. The two towns, which were distinct entities until the\u00a01920s, have blended together in a dust and concrete conurbation\u2014an\u00a0inauspicious centre for the production of some of the most expensive headgear\u00a0in the world.<\/p>\n The weaving takes place in a handful of villages outside Montecristi. One of\u00a0the most prominent is Pile (pronounced Pee\u2014lay), a town of 1,000. The\u00a0houses are ragged redbrick dwellings with rusting corrugated iron roofs, the\u00a0degraded dirt streets patrolled by strutting chickens and shuffling pigs.<\/p>\n The weavers work indoors, since the sun can make the straw too brittle to\u00a0manipulate, and mostly in the early morning and evening, when the heat and\u00a0humidity are at ideal levels for the work. They weave bent over in the\u00a0half-light. Many complain of back and eye problems.<\/p>\n Manuel Alarcon, a 71-year-old who has been weaving Panamas for 60 years,\u00a0says it takes him six weeks to make a hat, for which the comisionista pays him\u00a0$150. The money doesn\u2019t go far: in 2000, amidst a devastating economic\u00a0crisis, Ecuador abandoned the sucre, its own currency, and adopted the US\u00a0dollar. That brought macroeconomic stability, but steep increases in consumer\u00a0prices.<\/p>\n \u201cWe used to get 300,000 sucres for a hat, which was OK money,\u201d\u00a0says Alarcon. \u201cBut now I get the equivalent of $25 a week, which\u00a0doesn\u2019t buy you anything.\u201d He and his wife and three children live\u00a0in two bedrooms separated by a flimsy wooden partition.<\/p>\n Dollarisation is another reason young people are disinclined to stay in\u00a0Ecuador and continue the weaving tradition: of Alarcon\u2019s six children,\u00a0two live in Venezuela, one in the US. Of the three who remain, two work as\u00a0agricultural labourers. One son, Mariano, is a weaver. \u201cBut I may well\u00a0have to leave the country when I get married,\u201d he says. \u201cTo make\u00a0some real money.\u201d<\/p>\n Cenovio Espinal, a 63-year-old who I later discover is considered one of the\u00a0finest weavers in the world, lives in a bamboo house nearby. He receives $500\u00a0for his hats, each of which takes up to three months to make.<\/p>\n \u201cIt sounds like a lot, but it doesn\u2019t pay the bills,\u201d he\u00a0says. \u201cIt\u2019s no surprise that we\u2019re losing this art. In Pile\u00a0only 20 of us know how to weave well\u2014and almost all of us are\u00a0elderly.\u201d<\/p>\n Total production in Montecristi is now down to about 5,000 hats a year. Only\u00a0about a dozen of these are the finest \u201cmuseum quality\u201d.<\/p>\n In The Panama Hat Trail, Tom Miller quotes a Guayaquil hat retailer as\u00a0saying: \u201cIn 20 years the weaving of the Montecristi finos will be all\u00a0over.\u201d The book was published 20 years ago.<\/p>\n So are reports of the death of the Panama greatly exaggerated? When I reach\u00a0Miller by telephone at his home in Tucson, Arizona, he sounds a note of\u00a0caution: \u201cRemember,\u201d he says, \u201cit\u2019s in the interest of\u00a0the retailers to say the industry is in decline so they can jack up\u00a0prices.\u201d<\/p>\n But I cannot help feeling that the situation now looks more bleak than ever:\u00a0the rise of China, the migration, the politics and structure of the industry,\u00a0dollarisation\u2014all seem to have conspired to kill off the legendary hats.\u00a0Along the trail, I ask everyone I meet how long the Panama has left. Everyone\u00a0gives one of two answers: 15 years or 20.<\/p>\n As with all endangered species, there are glimmers of hope\u00a0for the Panama hat. In Chordeleg, a small town in Azuay, Anita Loja, a weaver,\u00a0has formed an association that is producing small numbers of Fairtrade Panama\u00a0hats for the Spanish market. In Montecristi, Brent Black, a US retailer who\u00a0sells the hats for up to $25,000, is working to get more money directly to the\u00a0weavers and so keep the tradition alive. And in Pile I meet Simon Abel, a\u00a038-year-old who is teaching his three children to weave superfinos.<\/p>\n Still, when Black and I talk by phone, I suggest that his efforts to save\u00a0the industry may have come too late. His answer is that of someone who reveres\u00a0the art of the real Panama hat. \u201cWe may be rearranging the deck chairs on\u00a0the Titanic,\u201d he says, \u201cbut, by God, they\u2019ll be in neat\u00a0rows.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a9 Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2008.\u00a0\u201cFinancial Times\u201d is a trademark of The Financial Times Ltd.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Financial Times of London; Weekend Magazine Feature January 13, 2007 The Last Straw By Hal Weitzman About 18,000 of some of the finest Panama hats in the world are piled in a\u00a0locked, caged-off corner of the storeroom at the Homero Ortega factory in\u00a0Cuenca, Ecuador, a picturesque colonial town in the province of Azuay in the\u00a0southern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":1015,"parent":27,"menu_order":24,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-193","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nmigrate, usually to Spain or the US.<\/p>\n
\noutside the centre are peppered with half-built mansions. \u201cThe migrants\u00a0send back money to build the houses for themselves,\u201d says Ruiz.\u00a0\u201cThey say they\u2019ll come back to live in them when they\u2019ve made\u00a0some money, but they never return.\u201d<\/p>\n