STORY by BLAKE GOLDFARB
PHOTO by KRISTEN HINES
OTAVALO, Ecuador -- The stench of burnt metal lingers in his musty workshop like road kill on a humid summer day.
As Humberto Morales discusses the changing face of Ecuador’s weaving market, he wears a blue surgeon’s mask to prevent the mechanical looms’ fumes from entering his nose and mouth.
Morales, who once made woolen jackets by hand, is an example of the change that has come to Ecuador’s craft industry. What began as a local business using hand-operated looms has evolved into a mechanized, competitive, multimillion-dollar industry.
“People I once regarded as friends are now my enemies,” says Morales, 56, who exports Ecuadorian crafts throughout the world. “It’s scary how money influences our personal relationships.”
With more than 40,000 Otavaleño craftsmen vying for the business of picture-snapping tourists and a global clientele, competition among the city’s indigenous people has soared to an unprecedented level.
Thousands of Ecuadorian Indians struggle to earn a living from the sale of their crafts at Otavalo’s principal artisan market, Plaza de los Ponchos. And thousands more can’t get the permit required to conduct business there.
Meanwhile, a minority of artisans like Morales prosper through mechanization and exportation of their crafts.
But the economic boom comes at a cost to Ecuador’s social fabric.
Older Ecuadorian-Indian generations see their 500-year-old customs and traditions crumbling in the face of ever-increasing commercialization.
Bargaining bonanza
The sun peers above a snow-peaked Andean mountain and sends rays of light down the dusty, dirt-packed streets of Otavalo, an Ecuadorian highland town famous for its craftsmanship. Weavers from surrounding communities caravan into the town and set up displays of their work at Plaza de los Ponchos.
By 8:31 a.m., the first bus from Quito, Ecuador’s capital two hours south of the market, rolls into Otavalo. Tourists wearing tropical shirts, jean shorts, blue socks, backless sandals and camera bags file into the plaza with their cash secured in fanny packs.
As they navigate through a labyrinth of colorful weavings, jewelry and woodwork, merchants bark the prices of their crafts in Spanish at passing tourists, who counteract by offering less than the asking price.
Woolen blankets, bright ponchos and hand-woven ski caps are among the most popular items.
Of the 165,000 tourists who visited Otavalo in 2005, each traveler spent an average of $115 at the market, according to the city’s Office of Tourism. This is in a country where the average weekly income is $70 per person.
But, with so many artisans competing for the same customers, thousands of weavers can’t sell enough crafts to make a living.
Laboring “like donkeys”
Luzcila Picuasi, 26, and her cousin Yolanda Lema, 28, brave the boiling sun six days a week to sell their family’s handmade sweaters at Plaza de los Ponchos.
After haggling with customers from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., the cousins walk to their home in Quinchuquí, a weaving community just outside of Otavalo, and help family members prepare more goods for market.
“We work like donkeys,” says Lema while sharing a laugh with her cousin. “We don’t even have enough time to get married.”
Despite laboring more than 16 hours per day, the cousins haven’t sold a single sweater this week.
Lema says her family of 16 survives off home-grown vegetables such as beans and corn. It’s been three weeks since she could afford to buy fruit, her favorite food to eat at the plaza. “All we can do is pray that tomorrow will be a better day,” she says.
Part of the problem, Lema notes, is that her customers refuse to pay higher prices for handmade goods. They want cheaper, machine-made crafts that are of lesser quality than those made by hand.
The cousins aren’t alone in their hardships. Other weavers who sell their handmade crafts at Plaza de los Ponchos struggle to make a living.
Antonio Cachimuel, 56, who sells his handmade ponchos at the plaza, remembers the early ’90s when mechanical looms weren’t even a thought. Cachimuel says he’d still make $70 per day when tourism slows during September and October.
Now, he and his oldest daughter María Elsa, 28, are lucky to sell one or two ponchos a week.
“We stayed home yesterday,” he says. “Sometimes the bus fare (43 cents) costs more than what I make in a day.”
Although the crafts tradition has survived in his family for more than 500 years, he advises younger generations of aspiring artisans to pursue another occupation.
“You can’t survive in today’s society without a permanent income,” he says.
Permitting process
But aside from increasing competition, the situation is even worse for Ecuadorian Indians who can’t acquire or afford a stand at Plaza de los Ponchos.
Obtaining the permit required to sell crafts in Otavalo’s principal market is like waiting in line at the supermarket deli department.
Take a number.
Ecuadorian-Indian families visit Otavalo’s municipal government office daily hoping for an opportunity to sell in the market, says Wilson Sanchez, who oversees the permit-granting process for the city.
The market is so full of vendors that weavers without a permit have “no chance” of getting one, Sanchez notes.
Each family is given a number on the waiting list and told they’ll be contacted by municipal government officials if a permit becomes available.
For José Morales, a weaver who lives four miles north of Otavalo in Carabuela, getting a permit isn’t an option -- he simply can’t afford to buy one.
The city charges $800 for a first-time permit, and merchants have the opportunity to renew their permit for $20 each year.
Families illegally rent their spaces in the plaza to other weavers for as much as $2,000 a weekend, Sanchez says.
Morales, like many other weavers from communities surrounding Otavalo, must settle for selling their crafts to vendors at the plaza.
Even though vendors pay him just 50 cents per sweater, which sell for an average of $6 at the market, Morales is forced to accept whatever income he can get.
“I’m being exploited for my craft, but there’s nothing I can do about it,” he says. “My family needs to eat.”
Morales has thought about exporting his crafts, but he’s leery of relying on the middlemen involved. Besides, it can take up to six months for profits abroad to reach the original producer, and Morales says that’s not an option.
“I need the money now.”
Commercialization of the craft
Although many weavers like José Morales struggle to put food on the table, a minority of artisans prosper through mechanization and exportation of their crafts.
Ecuadorian-Indian-owned export offices, which package and ship the crafts, outnumber cafés on the streets surrounding Plaza de los Ponchos.
Large transport trucks block local traffic as workers load the boxes destined for clients in New York, Montreal and Barcelona among other metropolitan areas.
The most successful export companies make their crafts by machine, which cuts labor costs and gins up output.
Eighteen-foot-long mechanical looms spin garments faster than employees can replace the empty spools of dyed fabrics.
Operators enter designs in the machine’s computer. After inputting the style number, the loom weaves a medium-sized jacket featuring Andes Mountain peaks in 12 minutes.
As one of the first Ecuadorian Indians to export his crafts, Humberto Morales, owner of Andes Artisans, manufactures jackets in a factory behind his shipping office and sends them to family members abroad.
His four sons, who live all over North America and Spain, left Ecuador in 1988 to establish a global clientele for their father’s crafts.
Although Morales misses his sons, who visit Ecuador once a year, he says the family must remain separated to maintain their standard of living.
The export business provides him with economic opportunities that most Ecuadorian Indians cannot afford.
“I have the ability to travel anytime, anywhere,” boasts Morales, who smiles so wide that his gold-capped tooth glistens in the morning sun.
Morales bought the Andes Hotel of Otavalo with profits from his export business, and he isn’t the only Ecuadorian Indian taking advantage of a booming industry.
Germania M. de De la Torre is general manager of SADECOM, one of the largest export companies in Otavalo. During the summer months, SADECOM sends abroad 60 boxes of Ecuadorian crafts per day and makes a profit of $150 per box.
De la Torre says most Ecuadorian Indians can’t export their goods because they lack clients abroad and can’t afford to pay fees like import and export taxes. She believes that weavers must unify and pool their money to export the crafts.
But weavers like Humberto Morales doubt this will ever happen.
“They’re not willing to group together,” he says. “No amount of money can alter their viewpoint.”
Competition drives this formerly communal culture apart. Marina Díaz, 26, a weaver living in Peguche, a town about two miles northeast of Otavalo, refuses to join forces with her neighbors.
She fears they will steal her designs for market.
Economic prosperity at a cost
Even though a small number of Ecuadorian Indians prosper through the mechanization and exportation of their crafts, other artisans like Díaz fear the export business undermines customs and traditions their society has emphasized for centuries.
She says the business provides weavers with travel opportunities and chances to learn about new cultures.
“When the indigenous people come back, they don’t want to practice their ancient culture anymore,” she says.
One of the most prevalent foreign influences is the popularity of American clothing among younger generations of Ecuadorian Indians.
Oscar Maldanado, 16, an employee at Humberto Morales’ factory, dresses for work in a Nike T-shirt, Levi’s jeans and Reebok baseball cap.
Even though he owns six traditional outfits, which Maldanado says his mom forces him to wear on Sunday, he prefers the “cooler” American brand names.
Foreign cultures also have an influence on the patterns of crafts produced for market.
Nestled among garments emblazoned with traditional scenes of Andean nature and wildlife, one jacket features a black skull woven into a tie-dye backdrop.
It stands out like a light-skinned American riding an Otavalo city bus loaded with dark-complexioned Ecuadorian Indians.
“American rock ‘n’ roll is influencing our culture,” says Luis Morales, 42, a weaver, while pointing to the jacket and pretending to play the electric guitar.
Hernán Román, an exporter of Ecuadorian crafts, believes Ecuadorian Indians have improved their economic lot but permanently damaged the culture’s familiar, social ways.
In recent years, Román has noticed an increased emphasis on individualism among the weavers. Unlike the past, when neighbors would help each other prepare goods for market, Román says Ecuadorian Indians are competing against one another.
“They don’t want to be the same anymore,” he notes. “They want to be better than all of their neighbors and friends.”
As some weavers prosper from their participation in the export business, distinct economic classes have emerged in Ecuadorian artisan communities.
Families with overseas clients can afford multi-story houses, cars, health care, education and travel. Ecuadorian Indians who can’t pay for such luxuries and amenities live in jealousy of their neighbors, José Morales says.
Morales notes that one month after building his three-story house, a neighbor across the street started construction on a four-story dwelling.
“Indigenous people are always looking for a way to one-up their neighbors,” he says.
Commitment to their craft
Despite their inability to make a living from the sales of their handicrafts and failure to obtain permits required for conducting business at the plaza, Ecuadorian Indians say they’re committed to ensuring the survival of their artisan tradition.
José Morales, the weaver who can’t afford the permit required to sell his sweaters at Plaza de los Ponchos, is on a mission. He’s dedicated to passing on the tradition that has given his family a reason to live for the past 500 years.
“I’ll go to my grave showing the world Ecuador’s finest handmade crafts,” says Morales while stitching the neck on a sweater.
The crafts draw him out of bed in the morning and occupy his time well beyond sunset. They are Morales’ life.
“I live for my family and my job,” he says. “I was born into this world as a craftsman, and I plan on leaving it as one.”