Wednesday, 25th November, Cuenca: in the paper!
The article about us came out this morning. Which led to a couple of phonecalls from US ex-pats. Always nice to chat to people about what we’re up to. (I’ll publish the article when I get hold of it)
One little known fact about southern Ecuador is that this is the home of Panama hats. NOT Panama. A grave injustice – caused by the fact that the Ecuadoreans shipped them up to the canal from which to sell them around the world. So Panama got the cred, and not Cuenca, Ecuador, the very epicentre of the trade.
We wanted to hunt out a Panama hat couple. Like the embroidery collectives of Northern Ecuador, there are many indigenous workers involved in the trade, and we had a lead similar to our one in the north, but it didn’t work out. So we went to the museum anyway, tried on some great hats (and some funny ones) and learnt about the trade.
There are different grades of Panama Hat – Standard to Super Fine – classifications which describe the fineness of the dried leaves woven to make the hat. The women who make the hats can make about 2 or 3 standard ones in a week, but a superfine one can take up to 4 months. Like the embroiders, it is work they can do in their own homes, around their children and their lives.
They then sell the hats to the factories, which then bleach and press them into shape, and finish them up for sale around the world. London is the biggest market, our wonderful guide Ifrein told us. And that the French have unusually small heads.
As you know, readers, I burn like a peach, so I have purchased the most exquisite hat which I have sent home, ready for my summer gardening forays.
Next up was an interview with Dr Juan Cordero and his wife, Anita. Juan is a history professor at one of Cuenca’s 7 universities. This is a small town, famed for not only its Panama hats but its culture. It’s Ecuador’s little pocket of poets, artists and generally the creative folk of the country, we’re told.
Dr Juan Cordero is the country’s former education minister, and has been married to his utterly lovely wife, Anita for nearly 40 years. Despite looking fabulous, and having been a minister’s wife up in Quito for his term, Anita is not mad keen on being filmed. She laughs as she tells me that she could talk the roof off a house until a camera is turned on her, then the words get stuck in her throat and she just freezes up. Either way, they are the most wonderful couple to interview. It’s utterly jovial, and we hold the interview in their house, which is at the back of the museum that the two of them have founded together in the centre of Cuenca, Museo de las Culturas Aborigenes. It’s been a lifetime’s work which they have shared – born of a shared passion for collecting items. When we ask what love is, Juan says that it’s about shared passions – and being prepared to make sacrifices. He says that they used to have to forego family holidays in order to be able to afford some artifact or another. But because they both believed in what they were doing, they could do it together. Now the museum is the largest collection of its kind in Ecuador, a fact of which they are both very proud. It really is a great place, built around a courtyard, and the kind of place – not unlike Cuenca itself – that you could spend days in.
I then dragged Mike out to the nearby Banos where there are volcanic hotsprings. We had hoped to find an economic widow – someone whose husband had left to work illegally in the States or Europe (Spain, Italy or France, usually), but we had no luck. So had a nice dinner instead.
