Pachacuti - Panama Hats and Fair Trade Clothing

Pachacuti has always worked in some the most remote rural areas of the Andes and one of our principal aims is to create sustainable rural livelihoods for our producers.

I am in Ecuador for a few weeks, the main purpose of my trip being to explain to our Panama hat producers all of the intricate details entailed in the production of our 2012 collection.  It is our most ambitious to date, but our weavers love working on new patterns and we have already discovered that they weave our coloured panama hats faster than the equivalent hat in a natural colour!

My first few days were based in Otavalo, from where I could travel out to the villages to see our embroiderers, tailors and felt hat makers.  I had come prepared to work on embroidery designs as I had learnt two months ago when visiting our embroidery group that high cotton prices meant that most buyers were either taking their designs to cheaper countries, or converting to machine embroidery.

Our embroidery group, who are based about an hour north of Otavalo on a remote mountainside, had been the first of our producer groups to receive glasses and cataract operations two years ago and I was keen to hear how they were progressing.  However,  Mathilda who co-ordinates all of our embroidery, told me about her latest visits to see the group. "Every time I visit" she explained "the embroiderers ask if there are any orders from Pachacuti due to the higher Fair Trade prices paid.  If there are no orders, they would rather earn money picking tree tomatoes as the market price for their skills is so low". Realising what a huge responsibility this creates for Pachacuti, I returned to my hotel and spent the entire weekend working on embroidery designs for a dress and a blouse in black cotton, so that at least we can place orders to sell in our shop over the Autumn period. 

Ecuadorian cotton wears and washes so well and we get a lot of repeat customers in our shop, yet the embroidered blouses are often more of an afterthought for me after designing our hats, so I left the area with new resolve to create more embroidery designs each year so that these traditional skills do not die out. 

My designs are usually based on traditional Ecuadorian embroideries, updated with different elements; I may include the odd motif from Mexican embroidery, or take some influence from '50s design.  Mathilda will carefully copy out my designs onto the sleeves and yolks of garments and take these to the embroiderers, collect them a week later and sew them into the garments. 

I think the photograph below shows exactly what we are trying to do at Pachacuti: Mathilda sitting at her sewing machine with her field of maize and vegetables outside the window.  The family are almost self-sufficient from their land, only purchasing essentials such as flour and rice from the local shop.

As traditional dress continues to westernise and buyers seek cheaper alternatives, these skills could be lost within a generation or two.  The region's boom days of the early '90s when everyone was exporting Ecuadorian wool jumpers, coincided with the men in the area converting to jeans and trainers instead of white trousers and alpargatas and ditching their traditional felt hat, keeping only their long plait as a symbol of indigenous identity.  Will women's dress follow this same fate?  At present almost all indigenous women in the area continue to wear traditional dress, which includes highly embroidered blouses.  Although not a pre-colonial textile art in the Andes, embroidery has been practiced in this region since it was imported by the Spanish in the 16th Century and was rapidly incorporated into traditional dress.

I'd always felt that we were playing our small part in preserving the traditional textile heritage of the Andes, but hearing that the embroiderers would rather earn money picking tree tomatoes than embroidering, unless that embroidery happened to come from Pachacuti, makes me realise what an incredible responsibility I have to the people and culture of this region.

For years it has frustrated me that every time I return from working in Ecuador, I invariably get asked "how was your holiday?".  Spending time with our producers in Ecuador is really hard work, frequently frustrating, long days and rarely a day off.

However, the real delight of our last trip to Ecuador in October was discovering a new Eco-lodge just a short walk along the river from one of our principal producers.  To put this in perspective, we normally visited these producers every day from Cuenca, the nearest town, usually driven the 3 hour return trip on precipitous zigzaggy mountain roads by a daredevil driver.  After being held up for half an hour on our first day driving to our producers by a nasty accident blocking this notoriously dangerous road, I was relieved to have booked into a newly-opened Eco Lodge for the next two nights.

Those two nights gradually extended into six nights as we enjoyed our leisurely morning riverside walk to work and returned to a swim and sauna in the evenings. Unaccustomed luxury compared to our usual trips! The Hosteria Barranco in Sigsig is $20 for a single and $40 for a double

                                       The Christmas Basket Coup

I arrived in Quito on the morning of 30 September to what appeared to be a normal day in Ecuador and blissfully unaware of events which were to follow later that day.  Sara, our Production Manager, and I had flown out from the UK and we met Mark in Quito as he had flown via New York courtesy of a free BA business class ticket to research potential trade contacts in the US.

As we arrived, President Rafael Correa was being tear-gassed by his own police force. The violence began as a protest by some police against a law scrapping their bonuses and their Christmas basket.  
It must have been literally minutes after we passed through passport control and took a taxi that the airport was seized by 300 air force personnel and military.  The KLM plane we had arrived on had already taken on more passengers in Guayaquil before we landed in Quito and was due for a quick turn around before flying back to Amsterdam. It was forced to turn back to the airport after leaving the gate and passengers were stranded in the airport.

I had booked a hotel in the old city, a block from the Presidential Palace.  Little did I realise I had booked a ringside seat for the action which was to follow!

On Friday, around 400 children from St Oswald's and Parkside schools in Ashbourne wore sunglasses to school.  The idea of this fundraising exercise was to raise money  for weavers in Ecuador who have poor eyesight yet cannot afford to purchase glasses.  It is a unique way for the children to have fun expressing themselves while learning about global citizenship and helping to make a real and lasting positive impact in the lives of others.

As part of Pachacuti's Fair Trade Certification, every year, together with each producer group, Pachacuti creates an annual action plan that allows producers to direct how Fair Trade will benefit them the most. In 2008 one embroidery group all complained of poor eyesight. In Spring 2009, we paid for eye tests, glasses and eye operations for the 20 workers who required them, totalling $800.

After the success of this project, Pachacuti approached  our co-operative of women Panama hat weavers based in Ecuador and enquired if the 300+ weavers might need glasses. The answer was a resounding YES. 

The women live in a poor, rural region of Southern Ecuador and rely on the weaving of hats as their primary source of income. This traditional skill is demanding work and requires good eyesight to produce quality hats.  To remedy this situation Pachacuti and the Co-operative decided to make the purchasing of glasses for the weavers their primary goal for their 2010 Fair Trade Action Plan.

Pachacuti arranged for eye exams to be given to the weavers and it was determined just over 200 of the women required glasses, with 65 weavers being prioritised as needing glasses urgently. This was beyond the financial means of Pachacuti and the co-operative to purchase.  It was with the help of a group of Ashbourne residents that the Sunglasses for Glasses concept was born as a means to achieve the funding for this project. It is our hope that, through the involvement of area school children, we can together raise the money needed for the purchase of the glasses whilst providing an opportunity for the children to learn about global issues and empathy for others.

Sunglasses for Glasses day last week raised enough money for over 30 pairs of glasses, so we are well on our way to our target!  A huge thank you to the schools and children who took part and  I'm looking forward to posting some photographs of our weavers with their new glasses!