The Panama Hat Trail Read online

  In 1834 rival officers vied for power within the new republic. One faction, attempting to control Manabí, ordered that all the Panama hats in the towns of Montecristi and Jipijapa be collected to raise money. The hats were hidden from the plunderers and smuggled out to Peru and Colombia. Montecristi, Manabí’s main straw-weaving town, shipped its hats through Guayaquil, 120 miles south, and Manta, 12 miles north. In 1849, at the height of the California gold rush, Ecuador exported more than 220,000 straw hats.

  Manta today is a lively port town busy with sailors and fishermen. Extensive beaches, an archaeological museum, and boating attract visitors. Playing on the beach one day were new recruits from California for the Summer Institute of Linguistics, the missionaries known in the United States as the Wyckliff Translators. The young group was staying at a nearby retreat. They acted like they had just gotten off the boat. “We’re the ones who translate the Bible into native tongues,” one said. “A couple of our people got killed in, where was it, Peru? Colombia? Anyway, we figured we’d fatten up and get a good tan before we got it too.” “Yeah,” his sidekick added, “so the pictures of our corpses will look good.”

  At Manta’s museum schoolchildren marveled at a display illuminating life in the Valdivian period, more than 1500 years BC. At the yacht club, a bedraggled boat captain walked up to the table where I drank Pilsener with a few members. The captain, from Los Angeles, said he was on his way down the Pacific Coast to the southern tip of South America. “Mind if I dock at your club for a couple of days?” The yachtsmen looked at him, then at his schooner, then at each other. “Sure,” they replied. “Everyone else does.”

  Everybody in town advised me to visit Fernando Zevallos Marzumillaga. He knows more about the history of Manabí than anyone. Just walk up to his door.

  Don Fernando received me cordially. In his eighties, he was frail of body but keen of mind. Unfortunately, I couldn’t understand his Spanish. Like many costeños, he eliminated most s’s and swallowed the last syllable of most words. I prayed for s-less endings and three-syllable words, and yearned for the clear Castilian of the sierra. Don Fernando’s son Alejandro, fifty years old, repeated his father’s words in more accessible Spanish. “I have some things you might like to see,” Don Fernando said. “First, so you will know who I am, this is my card.”

  FERNANDO ZEVALLOS MARZUMILLAGA

  Titulado y Condecorado Benemérito de Montecristi, Miembro de la Casa de la Cultura del Ecuador, de Unión Nacional de Periodistas del Ecuador, del Centro Cultural “Manta”, del Patronato Histórico “Guayaquil”, Asesor Histórico del Concejo de Manta, Emérito del Instituto Ecuatoriano del Seguro Social, Miembro de Honor de la Sociedad Jurídico-Literaria de Manabí y Miembro Asesor de la Comisión de Límites del Consejo Provincial de Manabí, Colaborador del Mercurio de Manta, La Provincia y Diario Ecuador de Portoviejo.

  Titled and Decorated Meritorious Benefactor of Montecristi, Member of the Ecuadoran House of Culture, of the Ecuadoran National Union of Journalists, of the Manta Cultural Center, of the Guayaquil Historical Foundation, Historical Adviser to the Manta Council, Emeritus Member of the Ecuadoran Social Security Institute, Honorary Member of the Boundary Commission of the Provincial Council of Manabí, Contributor to the Manta Mercurio, La Provincia, and the Diario Ecuador of Portoviejo.

  “I have here some old clippings. Take a look.” From his files he had retrieved fifty-year-old brochures about Montecristi, articles about the heyday of Panama hats, and mementos of General Eloy Alfaro, Manabí’s favorite son. Alfaro, born in Montecristi in 1842, led the Liberal Revolution, which brought a measure of enlightenment to the country when he became its ruler in 1895. Costeños have traditionally had more progressive ideas than people from the interior, since ships docking in port towns unload news and ideas as well as goods from the outside world. Prior to Alfaro’s regimes—he held office twice—a Roman Catholic theocracy ruled. Only Roman Catholics could vote, hold office, or teach. The Liberal Revolution restricted the influence of the Church, brought about separation of Church and State, instituted secular public education, and allowed for civil marriage and divorce. Church land became state land. For this Alfaro is a national hero, revered in the tradition of Washington and Lincoln.

  Alfaro’s father, Manuel, and later Eloy himself, made a good living exporting Ecuadoran products to Panama, especially toquilla straw hats. Manuel, in fact, is often heralded as the first of the major hat exporters. In the Zevallos house hangs a color drawing of Eloy Alfaro, with mountains in the background. Don Fernando showed me a postcard of Alfaro brandishing his sword aboard a steamer at the 1884 battle of Jaramijó, near Manta. Sixty-year-old sheet music sang the praises of the Liberal Party, whose beginnings the Alfaro family helped finance. A bust of John F. Kennedy sat next to the lamp. A 1909 German typewriter rested on a table. Its keys were to the left and right side of the carriage rather than in front of it. It had no keys for punctuation. Don Fernando had used it until recently.

  He recited local history with the passion of a historian credentialed by devotion to his subject and love of its people. “Toquilla straw hats have covered the heads of Napoleon of France, Edward VII and George V of England, and Hoover and Roosevelt of the United States.” I told him that every United States president since Grover Cleveland has been given a Panama by the government of Ecuador. He arched his eyebrows, inserting that fact into his history of the region.

  Reading up on the country’s history, I had developed a theory I wanted to try out. “Oiga, Don Fernando,” listen. “If the Alfaro family supported Eloy’s political activities”—Zevallos nodded slowly—“and its money was made, in part, from exporting toquilla straw hats”—he nodded again—“then Panama hats are at least partially responsible for Ecuador’s great Liberal Revolution. Isn’t that so?” Zevallos smiled benignly.

  His son was anxious to continue the discussion. He delighted in speaking with a foreigner in his house, teaching about his homeland and talking about travel. He poured me some weak instant coffee. I asked if he knew of the missionary retreat I’d been told about earlier. “Well, I’ve heard of it,” he replied. “But tell me—why do they come?” He ticked them off on his fingers. “There are Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah’s Witnesses—and Catholics! This country is ninety-eight percent Catholic and still they send missionaries.” His face took on an air of incredulity. “Are they trying to capture the other two percent? And these hippies we see, why do they come? Why do they act the way they do?” Perplexity now colored his face. “Their dirty long hair! Is it really true they’re from the families of the rich?”

  Alejandro pulled out a picture album from a 1973 visit to the United States. “I had a wonderful time in your country. I went to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Here I am with the other members of the Dinosaur Club—that’s an international group I belong to. I was their guest. Here I am with Snoopy.” He showed off photographs of parade floats, marchers, and of himself with smiling New York City policemen. Picture postcards of Chinatown, the Rockefeller Center skating rink, and the San Francisco Bay Bridge filled the next few pages. “I’ve never been to San Francisco,” he admitted. “I just like the picture. I sent a Montecristi fino to the head of the Dinosaur Club in New York when I got home.”

  Together we walked downhill to the center of town. I had expressed some interest in going to Jaramijó, the town where the legendary Alfaro had fought. “It’s a primitive fishing village, but you’ll like it. Over there.” He pointed to a main street. “That’s where you catch the bus. It goes by the park with a statue of John F. Kennedy.”

  A half-hour later I was ordering lunch at the Bar Picantería Embajador in Jaramijó, an open-air restaurant on the beach looking out at the Pacific Ocean. The Embajador was covered with a tin roof from which hung a bare light bulb. To reach the bathroom I passed through the town’s schoolroom, which was behind the kitchen. Fishermen were coming in from the Pacific with the morning’s catch, rolled their old wooden boats up the beach at low tid
e over short bamboo logs. Children scrambled around each boat helping unload the fish into rubber buckets and plastic bags. Some carried fish away in their hands. A World Cup soccer match between Germany and France blared out over the radio. Among the boats on the beach a scrawny woman sat cross-legged, waving her arms wildly at the incoming fleet as if conducting a symphony at the finale of the last movement. “She’s crazy,” a teenager said, “but we’re used to her. She’s here every day.”

  Naval officers from Manta dined a few tables away with their girlfriends. An elderly lady walked up offering seashells for twenty sucres each, about thirty cents. Barefoot, she stood a few inches shy of five feet tall. “Twenty sucres? Why, I could walk out there and find some for free,” I countered. “Yes, but not like these.” Her shells possessed no special qualities, but her face wore a mask of urgent desperation. “OK,” I said. “Ten apiece. I’ll buy a couple.” She beamed. Pelicans, dogs, and seagulls came by in groups of two. The seashell lady hovered around my table throughout lunch. Steamed fresh lobster cost three dollars.

  Three buses leave Manta for Montecristi every hour, passing coffee-processing factories and dry scrub brush along the way. In Montecristi I hoped to find some weavers who saw that their precious heritage was bought for a few sucres and sold for lots of dollars; that they were at the poor end of an increasingly profitable chain in which each person made more and more money off their original labor. I couldn’t explain the Wealth of Nations to them, or theories of productivity and profit, but I longed to see awareness beyond a shoulder shrug. Don Fernando nodded when I mentioned this to him earlier at his home in Manta. “I’ve got just the thing for you.” He rummaged through his files and came up with a 1974 booklet promoting Montecristi. He turned to a page with a poem whose author is identified as Lupi.

  El Sombrero de Montecristi

  A wondrous fiber, known

  To the world under an assumed name;

  Artful propaganda

  Of poorly paid, silent labor.

  The peacocking of pampered people;

  A well-spring, fertile and enduring,

  Of misfortune to the poor

  And extravagance of the wealthy.

  A fine warp, a painstaking marvel

  That transforms the straw

  Into exquisite high fashion.

  The holocaust of a people who naïvely

  Sponsor a pitiful way of life,

  Bound into sheaves of trampled misery.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MONTECRISTI FINO

  Throughout Latin America, generals, poets, and revolutions are honored with streets named for their anniversaries. Between Tijuana and Cape Horn, I am convinced, there is a street named for each day of the year. My bus ride ended on Ninth of July Street, a few blocks from Montecristi’s main plaza. No one I asked in Montecristi seemed to know what event the name of their main street commemorates, or at least no two people agreed on its antecedent.

  The town’s few hundred houses are standard coastal buildings: raised off the ground, made of graying split bamboo, lacking electricity and water, many without doors in their doorways, most with nothing in the windows. The ground resembled the ocean floor.

  Within moments of arriving I was surrounded by half a dozen boys. “Mister! Panama hats?” they squealed, exhausting their English vocabulary. “Panama hats!” Each one wanted to drag me off to his family’s house or store to look at hats for sale.

  Hats exported from Montecristi sell for hundreds of dollars in the United States and Europe. In an area where once virtually every household produced the highest quality hats, the number of weavers has slowly but irreversibly diminished. This scarcity has driven prices up at the receiving retail end, but in Montecristi the weavers’ income has not made a commensurate rise. Outshining the hats produced in Cuenca, Montecristis are virtual silken treasures, sleek and supple, each one an admirable example of delicate handicraft.

  “Take me to the home of Rosendo Delgado,” I said to the kids who had met me at the bus. “Sure,” they said in unison. “Follow us.” Delgado’s name had been given to me as a highly respected exporter of fine Panamas. We walked up Ninth of July Street past the town plaza and turned left at the church. Stores offered hats and furniture made of a sturdier straw, but few had customers inside. A statue honoring Mother’s Day had been erected by the side of the road. “Madre,” said the inscription, “símbolo y blazon de homenaje perpetuo.” Mother—symbol and blazon of perpetual homage. A block farther we crossed John F. Kennedy Street, and then on Rocafuerte Street the boys pointed to the corner house. “He lives there.”

  Don Rosendo Delgado looked out an upstairs window. “Come on up, come on up.” His hair was jet-black, his eyes alert, and his mouth still had many of its teeth. He appeared to be in his fifties and wore a loose shirt and baggy pants. He nodded his head thoughtfully as I explained my quest. “Well, there’s really nothing to it. The weavers from the countryside come here with the hats, and we finish them. Then I sell them.”

  Two other men sat in the living room with him, each with a small bowl of water beside his chair. They held Panamas about ninety-five percent complete. One knotted the straws on a hat’s outer brim together, giving it a smooth edge. The other trimmed his hat’s straw fringe, reducing its length from six inches to a quarter inch. The hat got a haircut better than his own. Now and then each would hold a hat up to the light looking for imperfections—a gap in the weave, a discoloration, a slight hole, or loose or broken straws. Both men wore a couple of Panamas, using their heads as inventory control. They kept all the hats away from the direct sunlight, and constantly dipped their fingers into the water to keep the straw moist. Water runs through the faucets of Montecristi for two hours every day—that is, in homes equipped with faucets. A truck selling water by the pailful wends its way through town irregularly. Panama hats, contrary to popular myth, are not woven under water.

  On a wall map Delgado pointed out where the weavers live who bring him hats, and where their straw grows. “The best straw for this area comes from Manglaralto and Olón,” he said. “I get hats from all over—from Pila, Tres Bajo de la Palma, and Las Pampas. Some weavers are lucky. Straw grows near their houses so they don’t have to buy it at market.” At least I think that’s what he said, for Delgado’s Spanish was even harder to comprehend than Fernando Zevallos’s. He spoke as if he held marbles in his mouth. “Más o menos”—more or less—came out “maomay.” He was on a low-consonant diet, feasting on vowels.

  Delgado’s father had been in the same business, and his father before him and his before him. Could Francisco Delgado, the early seventeenth-century Panama hat entrepreneur in Montecristi, have been related? “Well, yes, he could have been. We don’t know. There are lots of Delgados in this area. Lots. At one time or another we’ve all had relatives in the hat trade. That’s what we do.”

  Don Rosendo’s younger brother Carlos dropped by. Carlos taught school. “I teach a little about the area. Do you know how old these are?” He took two objects off a shelf—a broken bowl and a shard of some pottery. “They were made by people who lived here many centuries ago. We find lots of pre-Columbian pottery in this area.”

  A Mercedes Benz pulled up out front and honked. “It’s for you,” Carlos told his brother as he glanced out the window. “Someone from Guayaquil.” Rosendo loped down the stairs. The Guayaquileño introduced four well-dressed visitors from Spain, happy to have completed their dusty trip north. They talked a bit, and Delgado unlocked his ground-floor bodega. Inside, stacked against the walls, on chairs and tables, Delgado kept hundreds of high-quality Panamas. He showed the Spaniards different styles—ventilated, tight weave, wide brim, high crown, ladies’ fashions, and óptimos. The Spaniards inspected them carefully, setting aside the ones they wanted. Delgado announced his price; they suggested a lower price for a higher quantity, and back and forth it went on the wooden sidewalk, these well-manicured Europeans speaking elegant Castilian negotiating with the slightly unkempt mest
izo speaking his slurred Spanish. The Spaniards did their calculations in their heads; Delgado did his on brown wrapping paper. Soon they reached an accord. “Would you like them in boxes?” They would. With a flourish, Don Rosendo Delgado, expert hat finisher and exporter of some of the finest Panama hats in Ecuador, folded each hat in half, rolled it up into a tight cone, sealed it in paper, and ceremoniously placed it in a cozy balsa-wood box. Everyone smiled and shook hands. The Spaniards piled back into the Mercedes and Don Rosendo lumbered back upstairs. The little boys who had led me to Delgado’s place watched quietly the whole time.

  The next day I returned to Montecristi. When I hopped off the bus and heard a band playing the U.S. Marine Corps song, “From the halls of Montezu-u-ma . . . ,” I froze. Had they invaded? The music, it turned out, came from a nine-piece band that zigzagged its way through the town’s ten streets in every conceivable geometric pattern for an hour. The band alternated between the Ecuadoran national anthem and the Marine song. Incessant fireworks punctuated the music. During a military coup in the early 1970s, a Quito radio station, between breathless news bulletins from the front, alternated the national anthem with “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” “It’s too bad you weren’t here during our last coup,” a government secretary in the capital said. “They’re really a lot of fun. While the palacio was being attacked, everyone else was over at the big soccer game at the stadium. Our coups, they’re so—they’re so”—her mind grappled for the right word—“they’re so folkloric.”