![\"south-america\"](\"https:\/\/www.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/south-america.jpg\")
You\u2019ve probably heard the old saying that the three most important\u00a0factors in retail success are location, location, and location. Now imagine\u00a0your location is Ecuador in the mid-1800\u2019s.<\/p>\n
You have straw hats you want to sell. It doesn\u2019t take long to notice\u00a0that Ecuador is not a very busy corner. Not much walk-by traffic. Even today,\u00a0Ecuador is not a major tourist or commercial destination. Nor does it have a\u00a0lot of people passing through on their way to somewhere else.<\/p>\n
So you scratch your head and try to figure out how you\u2019re going to\u00a0find customers for your hats. You look at a map and notice that just a few\u00a0hundred miles north, a relatively short boat trip away, is Panama. In the\u00a01800\u2019s Panama was part of what is now Colombia. Then, Colombia was called\u00a0New Granada. Unlike Ecuador, Panama is a very busy corner, with lots of walk-by\u00a0traffic. Panama is the narrowest point of land separating the Atlantic and the\u00a0Pacific Oceans anywhere from the Arctic Circle to the southern tip of South\u00a0America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
![\"old-map\"](\"https:\/\/www.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/old-map.jpg\")
Before air travel, anyone on the East Coast of Canada or the U.S. who wanted\u00a0to go to the West Coast (or vice versa) had three choices: (1) travel overland,\u00a0(2) take a ship around the tip of South America, (3) take a ship to Panama, cut\u00a0across the isthmus, and get another ship on the other side. Option number three\u00a0was the fastest, and probably the least hazardous, of the choices.<\/p>\n
So, clever businessperson that you are, you take your hats to Panama to sell\u00a0them. People like your hats. There is a reasonable amount of traffic. Business\u00a0is good. Then gold is discovered in California and the number of people passing\u00a0through Panama explodes exponentially.<\/p>\n
You say the 1849 equivalent of \u201cWoo-hoo!\u201d Business is very\u00a0good.<\/p>\n
Your strong, lightweight, attractive, straw hats are much in demand. They\u00a0are perfect for deflecting the tropical sun of Panama, just the thing for those\u00a0long days many are about to spend outdoors in sunny California getting rich\u00a0panning for gold, and they\u2019re even nice to have on a summer day in\u00a0Philadelphia or Boston.<\/p>\n
People on their way to the gold fields buy your hats. People returning home\u00a0from the gold fields buy your hats. And when your customers arrive at their\u00a0destinations, an oft-heard comment is \u201cNice hat. Where\u2019d you get\u00a0it?\u201d The response is, of course, \u201cPanama.\u201d You neglected to\u00a0put Made in Ecuador stickers inside all the hats, so the inevitable result is\u00a0that the hats are called \u201cPanama\u201d hats.<\/p>\n
Great. Ecuador\u2019s most famous export is called a \u201cPanama\u201d\u00a0hat. People in Ecuador hate that.<\/p>\n
The photograph showed President Theodore Roosevelt wearing a black-banded\u00a0straw hat as he sat at the controls of a ninety-five-ton Bucyrus steam shovel during a three-day inspection tour of the Panama Canal excavation. The picture was widely published in the U.S., and around the world, prompting much comment\u00a0on the President\u2019s \u201cPanama\u201d hat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Other accounts give part of the credit to ship passengers going through the\u00a0canal, a love affair, and a revolution. Which is the \u201ctrue\u201d\u00a0explanation? They are all true. And no doubt each is at least partly why a hat\u00a0from Ecuador is called a Panama hat.<\/p>\n \t The Tomebamba River runs through the lovely colonial city of Cuenca. On most days local women do the family laundry along the river banks. \u00a9 B. Brent Black<\/p><\/div>\n Montecristi and Cuenca (kwayn-ka) are the two cities. They are the two primary centers of Panama hat production and export in Ecuador. Montecristi is\u00a0on the coast. Cuenca is in the Andes Mountains. Better hats come from\u00a0Montecristi. More hats come from Cuenca.<\/p>\n When Francisco Pizarro and his Spanish conquistadors arrived in what is now\u00a0Ecuador in 1526, inhabitants of the coastal areas were already wearing a\u00a0curious type of headwear made of woven straw. Indeed, ceramic figures dating\u00a0back to 4000 B.C. appear to be wearing a similar style of headwear.<\/p>\n As you might expect, Ecuadorians themselves do not\u00a0call their hats Panama hats. In Ecuador, the hats are sombreros de paja toquilla, or \u201chats of toquilla straw.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Manab\u00ed towns of Montecristi and Jipijapa (hee-pee-ha-pa) gained\u00a0pre eminence as the leading centers of the emerging hat industry. Hats woven\u00a0there gained a reputation for being better quality, finer, than hats woven\u00a0elsewhere. \u201cMontecristis\u201d and \u201cJipijapas,\u201d as the hats\u00a0were sometimes called, were increasingly more sought after than hats with PHOTO LEFT:<\/strong> The Catholic\u00a0church in Montecristi is its most prominent landmark. The statue is of Eloy\u00a0Alfaro, native son of Montecristi, first elected President of Ecuador, and a\u00a0major player in establishing Montecristi as the place \u201cPanama\u201d hats\u00a0come from. \u00a9 B. Brent Black<\/small><\/p>\n Jipijapa Town Hall in 1912<\/p><\/div>\n To this day, in Yucatan State of Mexico, which has developed its own\u00a0thriving Panama hat industry, hats woven of toquilla straw are more often\u00a0called \u201cjipijapas\u201d than Panamas. No one I spoke with knew that the\u00a0name had originated from the small town in Manab\u00ed Province, Ecuador. To\u00a0the south of Yucatan, in Belize, a young boy offered me some small baskets\u00a0woven of a kind of straw that looked surprisingly familiar. I asked what the\u00a0baskets were made of. He answered \u201cCheepeechoppa.\u201d No doubt this\u00a0was a corruption of jipijapa.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Two events occurred in the 1830\u2019s that would change Ecuador\u2019s\u00a0hat industry forever.<\/p>\n In 1835, Manuel Alfaro emigrated from Spain to Ecuador. He settled in\u00a0Montecristi and launched himself in the hat business. He organized production\u00a0better than anyone had previously by developing a large network of weavers and\u00a0other artisans necessary to the making and finishing of the hats, and by\u00a0creating a smooth-flowing production system. His goal\u2014export.<\/p>\n Soon, his hats were leaving the port cities of Guayaquil and Manta, bound\u00a0for Panama. He established a company in Panama that traded in hats, cacao, and\u00a0pearls. As noted in the previous section, he had chosen his location well and\u00a0fortune favored him with the California gold rush, which dramatically increased\u00a0traffic in Panama as well as demand for his hats. Alfaro sold his hats in\u00a0Panama and exported them from Panama to other countries, especially the United\u00a0States.<\/p>\n A family of weavers in Montecristi, 1912<\/p><\/div>\n By 1850, the U.S. had developed quite an appetite for woven straw hats from\u00a0Ecuador\/Panama, buying two hundred twenty thousand of them per year.\u00a0Alfaro\u2019s son, Eloy, entered the family business and guided it to even\u00a0greater heights. As noted in The Panama Hat Trail, by Tom Miller \u00a9\u00a0National Geographic, Eloy Alfaro used proceeds from hat sales to help finance\u00a0the Great Liberal Revolution in Ecuador. The revolution was a success and Eloy\u00a0Alfaro was twice appointed President of Ecuador. Naturally, others besides\u00a0Alfaro helped to expand hat production in Manab\u00ed and elsewhere along the\u00a0coast to meet the ever-growing demand.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In 1836, Cuenca declared itself in the hat business. Officials there decided\u00a0to open a hat factory in order to boost the local economy by capturing a share\u00a0of the rapidly increasing export market. Within a few years, their workshop was\u00a0making hats and training anyone who was willing to learn.<\/p>\n In 1845, Don Bartolome Serrano dramatically speeded up the development of\u00a0the Cuenca hat industry by taking a more comprehensive approach to the task at\u00a0hand. He went to the coast and set up straw supply lines from the largest\u00a0toquilla growing areas. He bought thousands of wooden hat forms, all the tools\u00a0of the trade, bleaching powder, even weavers. He hired master weavers from\u00a0Manab\u00ed and brought them to Cuenca.<\/p>\n Serrano and others in the Cuenca hat industry exercised their considerable\u00a0political influence, and soon apprenticeship in hat making was compulsory\u00a0throughout Azuay Province. Adults as well as children were required to learn\u00a0the trade. Failure to do so could result in prison time. With this kind of\u00a0\u201cincentive,\u201d the hat industry grew by leaps and bounds, by brims\u00a0and crowns. Soon, hat making was one of the most profitable and powerful\u00a0economic activities in the region.<\/p>\n Some reports claim that there was no law that sent people to prison if they\u00a0did not weave. They maintain that weavers were recruited from prisons and that\u00a0was how the rumor started. Sorting hats at the old Ortega factory in Cuenca<\/p><\/div>\n My biggest problem with the Cuenca dealers is that they routinely sell\u00a0Cuenca hats as \u201cMontecristi\u201d hats. The largest, K. Dorfzaun, agrees\u00a0that the practice is wrong. But they all have to yield to European and US\u00a0customer demands that they label the hats as \u201cMontecristi\u201d hats. If\u00a0they do not do as asked, they will lose the order to a neighboring competitor\u00a0who will. Even an exporter who wants to end the practice cannot. All of them\u00a0are struggling to stay profitable. No one can risk losing\u00a0business.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The governmental agency in Ecuador that will make the decision is the IEPI.\u00a0They also sent an inspector. A favorable ruling would mean that the Cuenca\u00a0exporters can no longer sell Cuenca hats as Montecristi hats. If they want to\u00a0sell Montecristi hats, they have to sell real Montecristi hats. That means they\u00a0have to buy real Montecristi hats.<\/p>\n All over Ecuador, street vendors and stores sell Cuenca hats with balsa\u00a0boxes declaring the hat to be a Montecristi hat. There are more Cuenca hats\u00a0sold every year that are falsely called Montecristi hats than there are real\u00a0Montecristi hats sold. This is a primary reason why hat weaving is dying in\u00a0Montecristi.<\/p>\n I believe that if I can effectively end large scale misrepresentation of\u00a0non-Montecristi hats as Montecristi hats, then the art can be saved. As long as\u00a0the global market demand for Montecristi hats can be openly satisfied with\u00a0cheaper counterfeits then the real art of Montecristi will continue to decline.\u00a0If that market demand can be met only with real Montecristi hats, then demand\u00a0for true Montecristi hats will increase dramatically.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the plan. We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n Weavers in the town of Bibli\u00e1n, near Cuenca, developed their art to a\u00a0higher degree than the other weavers of the region. Hats from Bibli\u00e1n\u00a0actually began to rival those from Montecristi and Jipijapa for quality and\u00a0fineness. In 1988, I went to Bibli\u00e1n to find Cesar Vicu\u00f1a, a\u00a0weaver mentioned in Tom Miller\u2019s book, The Panama Hat Trail.<\/p>\n I found Sr. Vicu\u00f1a, Master Weaver of Bibli\u00e1n, beneath a tree\u00a0sleeping off the joys of a substantial quantity of ca\u00f1a<\/em>, a very raw\u00a0local cane liquor. He seemed not to mind having his nap disturbed and guided me\u00a0back to his house where I examined and purchased several of his hats. They\u00a0were, indeed, as finely woven as any I had seen in Montecristi. The straw,\u00a0however, had not been as well cared for and bleached. The hats were darker and\u00a0less uniform in color than those from Montecristi. In comparison, they looked\u00a0almost \u201cdirty.\u201d<\/p>\n I took the hats back to Cuenca, hoping to find someone to finish them for\u00a0me. They still had six-inch-long straw hanging from the unfinished brim edges.\u00a0My two hats from Sr. Vicu\u00f1a caused quite a stir in Cuenca. Their\u00a0fineness of weave attracted a great deal of attention everywhere I showed\u00a0them.<\/p>\n TO BE CONTINUED\u2026<\/strong>Sorry, the rest isn\u2019t finished yet. I thought\u00a0it would be better to let you read what is finished, rather than hold\u00a0everything until I have time to do it all. BBB<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \t Why Is a Hat from\u00a0Ecuador Called a Panama Hat? Panama Hat Weaving in\u00a0Ecuador\u2014A Tale of Two Cities The Panama Hat\u2014Fashion Phenomenon The Fall from Fashion Favor Myths, Legends, and Lore of the Panama Hat You\u2019ve probably heard the old saying that the three most important\u00a0factors in retail success are location, location, and location. Now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":1124,"parent":84,"menu_order":9,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-117","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4127,"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/117\/revisions\/4127"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/84"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stage.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"roosevelt-tan\"](\"https:\/\/www.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/roosevelt-tan.jpg\")
A second major contributor to the misnomer was the Panama Canal.<\/strong> Canal workers often wore the hats, which showed up pretty well in black-and-white\u00a0news photos of the day. One photo, made on November 16, 1906, is often credited as the origin of both the name and the fashion.<\/p>\n![\"city-river\"](\"https:\/\/www.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/city-river.jpg\")
![\"Ceramicw\"](\"https:\/\/www.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Ceramicw.jpg\")
The almost brimless hats worn by 16th century Ecuadorians resembled\u00a0a Spanish hat style of the time called a toque. Consequently, the Spaniards in\u00a0Ecuador began to refer to the straw from which the hats were woven as toquilla\u00a0straw, or paja toquilla.<\/p>\n![\"church\"](\"https:\/\/www.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/church.jpg\")
Beginning in the early to mid-1600\u2019s hat weaving evolved as a cottage\u00a0industry all along the Ecuadorian coast. Hat weaving and wearing grew steadily\u00a0in Ecuador through the 17th and 18th centuries. Even then, the best quality\u00a0hats were being made in what is now the province of Manab\u00ed\u00a0(mahn-ah-bee).<\/p>\n
\nlesser provenance.<\/p>\n![\"jipijapa-town-hall\"](\"https:\/\/www.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/jipijapa-town-hall.jpg\")
![\"family-of-weavers\"](\"https:\/\/www.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/family-of-weavers.jpg\")
\n![\"Serrano_Hat_Sign\"](\"https:\/\/www.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Serrano_Hat_Sign.gif\")
One of the largest exporters in Cuenca today is Serrano Hat. They say they\u00a0are the same company that was started by Don Bartolome Serrano and are,\u00a0therefore, the oldest hat company in Ecuador. Their competitors say they are\u00a0not the same company, not the same Serranos, and not the oldest. As noted in\u00a0the section Grades of Quality of Panama Hats the exporters in Cuenca do not\u00a0agree on how to grade a Panama hat either. Nor will they work together for\u00a0their mutual benefit, to protect and expand the Panama hat market overall. I\u00a0have tried on several occasions to persuade the three largest exporters to\u00a0unite around a common goal. No luck at all. Interestingly, each company claims\u00a0to fully support the goal while assuring me that the other two will not support\u00a0it. So, if they all support the goal, why will no one work to achieve it?<\/p>\n![\"SORTINGW\"](\"https:\/\/www.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/SORTINGW.jpg\")
![\"Logo_Montecristi_Foundation\"](\"https:\/\/www.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Logo_Montecristi_Foundation.gif\"){kind=logo}
I have been working to take the decision out of their hands. The Montecristi\u00a0Foundation filed a formal legal action in Ecuador applying for Denomination of\u00a0Origin status for \u201cMontecristi\u201d hats. I want\u00a0\u201cMontecristi\u201d protected for hats as Bordeaux is protected for\u00a0wines. The foundation filed the action on behalf of The Artisans Association of\u00a0Montecristi. Our case has attracted the attention of the World Intellectual\u00a0Property Organization, part of the UN, and the most important international\u00a0group for these things. They sent an inspector to Montecristi to see how the\u00a0hats are made and if they qualify for such protection. The inspector issued a\u00a0favorable report supporting our application.<\/p>\n![\"cesar-and-wife\"](\"https:\/\/www.brentblack.com\/cart\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/cesar-and-wife.jpg\")
Okay, back to the history.<\/p>\n