Feature Article

The Darién Rainforest Basket Economy

© 2006 By Charlotte Meares
Photography © 2006 Lorran Meares, All Rights Reserved

Television and the print media shrink our tinyplanet and compress our global perspective until the daily struggles of the poor, starving and victimized take place in our living rooms. Through our travels we also come face to face with human suffering and the lack of the most basic necessities.

But nourished-body and soul-and dignity restored, individuals and communities can grasp opportunities to achieve self-sufficiency, to enhance the quality of their lives and not just to survive, but to thrive.

Thriving implies a strong economic foundation has been put in place. Fair trade sets in motion the process of economically viable interchanges for indigenous groups whose work might otherwise have been exploited. The Meares Collection represents the works of the most talented Wounaan and Emberá weavers, whose basket enterprise-fairly traded-bolsters not only individual, but also collective economies within the Darién Rainforest of Panamá.

Trading fairly assumes a responsibility in helping to alleviate poverty. One conducts business with integrity, respects the culture with which one is working and manifests compassion for the growth pains of the people who are learning to use their skills to better themselves.

Lorran and Charlotte Meares, who assembled The Meares Collection, participate in offering that hand up. They pay tribute to the artistic skills of hundreds of weavers throughout the Darién in a number of ways.

The first is to recognize that the three- or four-figure dollar price the weaver establishes for her basket may seem extraordinarily high compared to prices artisans throughout most Third-World countries receive for their work, but Wounaan artists have an edge or two. Fortunately for them, education is required and literacy is high, even in remote villages. Education empowers, not just by enabling more people to "do the math!"

Second, for several generations Panamá's indigenous people have been exposed to the dollar economy fostered by the Panamá Canal. Goods have been bought and sold in a currency familiar to both us and to the Wounaan.

Third, as early as 25 years ago missionaries and American friends taught the Wounaan that their time and artistic talents have worth. Weavers' increasing awareness of the collectibility of their fine basketry-which museum curators have credited as rivaling the finest Native American baskets-empowers (and emboldens) them to price their work closer to that which artists in the U.S. might ask for working taking comparable time, effort and artistic skill.

Indeed, weavers may even raise the price of their work significantly from one piece to the next, gaining wisdom about the involvement needed for completion. These factors contribute to creating the Wounaan's well-compensated, non-co-op craft- and art-production environment, which may be unique among indigenous artists.

The Meares Collection is the result of co-creative efforts, working directly with the very finest weavers. Co-creation is good for the weaver and the marketing representative as it affords the weaver the opportunity to establish a price for a specially commissioned work of a certain size, complexity and construction time. The final price may be renegotiated if the weaver's work has become unexpectedly complex or outsized the original concept. The interactions also enhance the weaver's insights into Western preferences for styles and colors.

Master weaver Alina Itucama, one of 75 artisans from around the globe who had been selected to participate in the July 2004 Santa Fe International Folk Art Market, responded to the misconceptions about the basket economy. She suspects, she said, that people who accuse a gallery representing Wounaan basketry of unfair trade practices (i.e. paying weavers a few dollars for months or years of work) don't recognize that their so-called "protective" agenda is actually an insult to the weaver.

"Weavers aren't stupid," Itucama explained in Spanish. "They don't sell a basket for $25 that will ultimately carry a $5,000 retail price tag." Itucama ought to know. In addition to coaching weavers in remote Darién villages techniques for creating finer, more desirable baskets, Itucama also runs a small shop in a Panamá City artesania center, where tourist-grade baskets by the hundreds annually make their way to new owners. It's the alma mater of her MBA.

"Weavers have learned to ask for what they want, and they rightly believe that they should be compensated for their year or two of work. Talented weavers get their asking prices or very close to them."

Still, it has taken time for weavers to understand how many hands a basket must pass through before it ultimately resides in the home of a collector. "The cost of doing business in the U.S.and even here in Panamá City, of course, is foreign to them. "But even limited exposure to the city to shop in department stores or giant supermarkets helps them to better understand how products go from here to here to there, and with each exchange another layer of expense gets added that's reflected in the final selling price."

As well-executed and intricately patterned baskets take months and even years to weave, baskets selected for The Meares Collection are virtually always commissioned in advance, or "presold." While a small, exquisite piece may have been created solely as a treasured gift for someone special, keeping a salable and valuable basket for herself is a luxury a weaver can rarely afford. We believe that when a museum-quality basket is being created, the artist and her family must be supported for the duration of the project.

Increasing collectibility of hösig ditranslates into a stable and primary income source for Wounaan and Emberá families, who use the significant money that they receive for a myriad of expenses that may surprise the casual buyer.

It's difficult enough to identify with a rainforest lifestyle, much less conceive of the expenses its dwellers might have. No driving the kids to soccer practice in the SUV or taking a family vacation at Disney World. But everything is relative. One of the largest cash outlays pays for expensive outboard motors (and the gas to propel them), making small boats and dugout canoes more time-efficient transportation. Peek into an open-sided hut, and you'll likely see a recently aquired outboard sheltered from the rains, hanging from the rafters alongside hand-woven fishing nets.

Villagers also need money for their children's education (which the government requires, paying teachers), for expenses such as books, uniforms, paper, pencils, medicine, trips to the city to the doctor or dentist, surgical procedures, clothes and shoes (flip-flops, sneakers and even street shoes are increasingly prevalent in villages), food not grown or gathered, wheelbarrows, concrete, modern conveniences for huts (such as scrubable fiberglass outhouses, true kitchen sinks, dishes or tables), propane fueled lanterns, flashlights (it gets black in the rainforest at night), plastic tubs for doing laundry at home instead of in the river, PVC pipes for bringing water to the huts and even to purchase "chunga" fiber for making baskets if she doesn't have the time to gather, process and prepare her own, even gold to fill her cavities.

Basket making is a precise, tedious, task requiring extreme patience. Yet it is far from "sweat-shop" work. Weaving-though a solitary task-has long been a communal activity. Women gather-as quilters once did in the U.S. generations ago-in each other's welcoming homes during the late morning or early afternoon hours, when the children attend first-session school or play among the open-sided dwellings. Baskets nestled on their laps (often babies at their breasts), weavers laugh, tell stories on their husbands, complain about the heat or the rain, wish, dream, coach each other, innovate.

Like artists everywhere, some have the innate talent to excel and create for their families a substantial income stream. Once mired in desperate poverty, the Wounaan and Emberá continue to raise their standard of living, perhaps more rapidly than many other indigenous peoples who have learned to produce a salable product.

Recent research conducted by Julia Velasquez-Runk, Ph.D. Yale, affirms the economic viability of weaving to families, allowing them to remain in their villages rather than relocating to urban ghettos and commuting to menial-labor jobs paying at best $1.50 an hour.

Today, more and more men see weaving as a lucrative alternative to sales of their cocobolo wood or taguanut carvings. But whether the primary "bread-winner" is the woman or her husband, the vital monetary infusion from basket weaving helps not only to preserve Wounaan culture, but also encourages the community support necessary to nurture master artists.