STORY by HEATHER BERGER
PHOTO by ALEXANDER KOLYER
The music begins at dawn.
Four pedals start their rhythmic ups and downs, plunking notes of a thousand rainbow strings. Creaks of aged wood resonate to the stone floor, where vibrations halt only by the metal weights thumping to each off beat. Hours later, the song isn’t complete.
Weaver Segundo Gramal Conejo makes his music from a foot-treadle floor loom, sounding tradition down the pebbled road of his beloved city of Peguche. And despite new temptations infiltrating his world, he plays the same song each day.
The humming of modern machines have replaced traditional sounds streaming from most other indigenous homes. During the last two decades, technology made it possible to produce bags, sweaters and blankets at the flip of a switch. The rise of machines in the Imbabura province of Ecuador silenced many of its artisans and suppressed their music.
But this “Tayta Piqui,” or “little father,” wasn’t one of them.
Only a blue woven blanket, draped from a low-hanging support beam, separates Segundo and the wooden instrument he’s known since birth. Despite vacant rooms surrounding his banana-flavored courtyard, Segundo insists on sleeping inside his workshop. The “Centro Tayta Piqui Cultural” holds his bed, his crafts and his livelihood. No machine or U.S. dollar will change that.
A long day’s work
Segundo and his family of workers rise with the sun. When it takes three full workdays to make one blanket, there’s not much time to rest.
Segundo’s wife, Maria Mercedes, prepares for weaving in the courtyard. Spinning yards of colorful wool onto a madeja, a metal wheel of sorts, she untangles and winds it around small bamboo tubes. After completing each one, she brings it into Segundo so he can weave it into the design. But the fuzzy mess of tangled wool rises high like the mountains on which they live. And with housework and cooking that also needs to get done, her job continues long into the evening. Sometimes, she must work until 2 a.m.
Segundo’s tedious preparations can take just as long. Before weaving can actually begin, he must individually thread each strand of wool, cotton or acrylic through one of dozens of small needles attached to the loom. These needles connect to one of three frames, and where he threads each color lays the groundwork for a design. After completing this two-hour process, he begins.
Screeeeeeech, ker-plunk. That’s one stitch. Screeeeeeech, ker-plunk. That’s another. When even one small strand breaks, he must break the rhythm, and stop to tie a knot or rethread the whole strand. At 69 years old, Segundo can complete only about 15 stitches a minute. But he pulls each strand taut, making the design concise. True artisans don’t cut corners to finish faster.
“There’s no prestige in work like that,” he says. “No one will appreciate it.” Making an order of several dozen blankets for the Casandina Hotel in town, Segundo will labor harder than usual to complete them. The traditional loom towers over him like a harp to a toddler, and for each stitch, he must lunge across it on the tips of his indigenous slippers. His petite 5’4 frame – which earned him the Quechan nickname Tayta Piqui – makes operating the loom exhausting and sometimes frustrating. But despite its pitfalls, Segundo wouldn’t trade his loom for a new one. It’s not just wood, he says, but part of a bloodline.
Selling an older two-pedaled loom for the more efficient kind with four, Segundo’s grandfather bought the contraption for $400 around six decades ago – when Segundo was just 8 years old. Both equal in size, the new loom just shakes less.
“Back then, we were the ones with the modern technology,” he laughs.
After watching his father and grandfather weave traditional ponchos and valletas, Segundo became part of the family business in his young teens, almost a right of passage for boys in artisan families. He recalls wearing traditional white trousers and belted blouses to work, even if they’d get filthy from working in the soot on his workshop’s floor. Until marrying Maria Mercedes at age 20, he had to wear indigenous clothing everywhere, as a gesture of propriety. These days, he says, many of the younger people don’t wear that clothing every day. And unlike children of the past, many refuse to work on the floors.
“The younger generations are changing,” he says. “They think some things we do as traditions are not good enough for them…they want newer things, like machines.”
The rise of machines
Now, in three days, locals can make more than just one blanket – they can make dozens. Although more production means more money, it does nothing for a culture that prides itself on artisanship.
“People are just worried about making money, not about the quality of their goods,” Segundo says.
Machines often produce weavings with loose holes between fewer stitches, because owners want to get the products out faster for a profit. They produce hundreds of similar products by using patterns, so someone doesn’t have to individually design each one, he says.
In the nearby city of Otavalo, home to the largest craft market in Ecuador, local vendors show bundles of mass-produced goods, luring in tourists with the infamous notion that the market welcomes bargaining as part of its people’s culture. Sweaters, often falsely labeled as “hand made,” sell for about $8.
Segundo believes that even proper artisans, still working by hand, will do themselves wrong at the market.
“By bargaining and seeming desperate for money, they make our goods seem cheap and meaningless,” he says.
More so than the loss of craft quality, however, has been the loss of decency in craftsmen. Workers in local export agencies can see the evolving personalities of mass-producers in the area.
“Selfishness and jealousy control many of these people,” says Germania M. de De la Torre, whose husband owns SADECOM, an international export service with an office in Otavalo. “Some of them who make enough money here are fortunate enough to go abroad and make even more…but then they come back and start buying up properties, and others want what they have.”
Segundo no longer speaks with his neighbors. He says they try to steal his designs and make cheap copies to sell at the market. Sometimes, they even lie to tourists so they won’t visit his workshop.
“When I have visitors, I will not let them walk down the streets alone, in fear of what my neighbors will say,” he says. “They will comment on anything…make me into something I’m not.”
De la Torre also worries about those who can’t overcome their newfound greed for material things. The yearning to have trendy clothes, fancy cars and the newest homes begins to control some people’s lives. She fears some may lose sight of the traditions that got them there in the first place.
“A loss of culture can occur,” she says. “When people travel to a new world, they learn negative things from other cultures and bring them back here.”
She believes the indigenous youth exists as the solution – or biggest setback – in fixing the conflict among the Imbabura artisans.
“Students can improve family situations with their knowledge of new ways,” she says. “But they also want what the Americans have, like $100 sneakers.”
Generating change
Miriam, Segundo’s youngest daughter, describes her father in three words: hard-working, because of the time he gives his profession; responsible, for preserving their culture; and loving, because family comes before anything else.
Despite his rigid traditions, Segundo still tries to embrace some change through his children. Three out of nine live outside Ecuador, pursuing their own professions in Spain, Belgium and Canada, and also selling their father’s crafts. Now, they provide his main source of revenue.
“My children are very proud to maintain our culture overseas,” he says. “And they are proud to talk about the things I’ve taught them.”
With the advice of his children, Segundo tries to embrace trends in artisanship as best he can by hand. He takes classes at the Casa de la Cultura in Quito to learn about new styles in clothing. He’s now learning to make shawls, a new style for women.
People in other countries appreciate quality and are willing to pay the proper price for true artisan crafts, he says. They’re more interested in the stories behind them, as well.
When Segundo traveled to Paris for an international conference, people wanted to know why he did things a certain way, so he educated them about the weaving process and indigenous clothing. After becoming more knowledgeable, he says, they valued his work.
He also taught them about another skill he has: the guitar. Segundo now appears on several compilation albums featuring traditional Latin American music. He says people seemed surprised to learn of his other talents.
“In Paris, people asked me where I learned to play guitar. I responded, ‘I learned at home, where I taught myself,’” he says. “Everyone insists on learning things from mimicking other people, but you don’t need to do that. You just need to envision what you want to do, and then you can do it.”
More than earning a profit, he loves teaching his beliefs as an Ecuadorian artisan. He says that by teaching, he can better understand the world, as well.
“Some people today have a vision to only make money,” he says. “To me, it’s just as important they know me and can see my culture.”
Miriam, 20, hopes to travel next. She’d like to live in Montreal with her sister, Callellia; however, she has much to accomplish before that. Currently, she works at the Agencia del Cargo Pachakutic – the export agency her father uses to ship his goods – to pay tuition for her night classes at the University of Otavalo. After a long day, she comes home to help her mother with late-night chores.
“Unfortunately, the work in my house is not enough to pay my studies,” she says.
In studying social and cultural developments at the university, Miriam hopes to help fix the problems affecting her community, such as poor education and unsanitary plumbing. She’d also like to help her parents a bit more.
“I’d like to help them understand the advantages and disadvantages of commerce,” she says. “I’ve tried to show my father how to use the Internet, but he's a little afraid.”
Segundo wishes someone would teach every artisan the ways to succeed while still respecting their crafts, their culture and themselves.
“I would like to receive a course on how to sell things…for everyone to value their work,” he says.
Until he finds such a thing, Segundo will greatly miss the help of his youngest child when she leaves Ecuador. But he recognizes her need to travel, see other cultures and spread what’s left of theirs. He knows that, like his other children, she won’t forget her Tayta Piqui.