“Limpiar con trapo”—scrubbing with rags dipped in starch.
“Mazatear”—beating with mallets.
“Darle forma”—pressing the hat tightly over a wooden form to give it the final shape, after which it is folded and ready for shipment. The complete process from buying to shipping costs the wholesale dealer about a dollar a dozen.
Virtually every inhabitant of San Pablo is, from childhood, an expert weaver of hats. We had only to glance in at a door to be almost sure to find the entire family, large and small, so engaged. They squatted on their earth floors, leaned in their doorways, wandered the streets, incessantly weaving hats; they gossiped and quarreled, they grew vociferous in political discussion, and still they went on weaving. They shouted across the plaza to the two “meestares” that were the guests of Santiago, the barber, a “Where-do-you-come-from-where-are-you-going-what-is-your-native-land?” in one single flow of words, without a pause for breath, but their fingers continued to weave hats as steadily as if they were automatic contrivances. We were told that in all the history of the town only one boy had been too stupid to learn to weave. He was now the priest of a neighboring hamlet. Some make a regular business of it and weave several hats a week, as many as one “común” a day. Only the rare victim of an artistic temperament prides himself on putting his best efforts, and from two weeks to a month of work, into an article of fine weave, to receive a small fortune of eight or ten dollars in one windfall. It is in keeping with Latin-American character that only a very few choose this extended effort, instead of the short, ready-money task of weaving “comunes.” The government telegraph operator of San Pablo—who probably averages a dozen messages a week—had a record of one hat a day, six hats a week, the year round. That was probably at least double the average output, for very few worked with any such marked industry. The overwhelming majority are amateur weavers, making one hat a week merely as an avocation in the interstices of their more regular occupations of cooking, planting, shopkeeping, school-teaching, and loafing. The boy in need of spending money, the village sport who plans a celebration, the Indian whose iron-lined stomach craves a draught of the fiery caña, the pious old woman fearful of losing the goodwill of her cura, all fall to and weave a hat in time for the Saturday market. Had they not these desires, unimportant though they may be, those in far-off lands who wear such head-dress would pay more dearly for a scarcer article. The more thrifty and ambitious begin to braid next week’s hat on the way home from market. By Sunday noon the hut is rare in all the land around in which at least one “panama” has not begun to come into being; by Monday even the liquor-soaked have begun to see the necessity of getting busy, on penalty of suffering a dry week-end. The result is that the traveler can almost tell the day of the week by the stage of development of the hats he meets along the route.
The center of the Nariño hat industry is Pasto. Not that its inhabitants are weavers, but here orders are received from the outside world and distributed among the towns of the province. Thus Jesús Diaz, local agent of San Pablo, receives one morning a telegram worded:
“Suspend 12–15; start 11–13.”
The figures refer to centimeters of brim and crown, the only variation of style being in the comparative width of these. “Castores” are made for the American trade; “parejos”—“equals,” of which brim and crown are of the same width,—go to Spain; the “ratonera,” of very narrow brim, finds its market in Habana. The weavers of San Pablo can seldom be induced to make the wide-brimmed hats for women, since these can be sold only in the United States and the market is very uncertain, “because there,” a woman confided to us, “the style is always changing, as if they do not know their own minds.” Unless they can be sold in our own land, these broad-brimmed hats are worthless, for the women of Nariño wear only what we would consider “men’s styles.” Those worn in San Pablo are of a square-topped, ugly form, roughly woven, as if each consigned to his own head those so carelessly made that they cannot be sold.
His telegram received, Jesús sends his subagents out through the hamlets with the new specifications, here and there to prepay something on the new order. For so from hand to mouth do many of the weavers live that they are frequently unable to buy the materials for the next hat without the agent’s “advance.” The “straw” for one hat costs from one to forty cents, depending on the fineness. The high price of the better grades is chiefly due to the long labor involved in the weaving, with, of course, the usual heavy middleman profits between maker and ultimate consumer. The daily hat of the telegraph operator brought him from ninety cents to a dollar; the final purchaser in the United States would pay $4 or $5 for it. The name “panama” is unknown in Nariño in connection with hats. None were ever made on the Isthmus; they took the name by which we know them because Panama was long the chief distributing center. To their makers they are known simply as “hats,” or, if it is necessary to specify, as sombreros de paja (straw hats), or sombreros de pieza. The best hats in all Colombia were said to be made in La Unión, a little town lying in plain sight on a sloping hillside to the east; but in spite of their patriotism, many admitted that the best on earth are those of jipijapa, made in Manabí, Ecuador. An old woman of La Unión had won many prizes and awards in national and even international expositions, not merely for her hats, which sold for a hundred fuertes here, and for $100 in Europe or the United States, but for aprons and other garments woven of the same “straw.” The people of San Pablo complained that the Japanese, especially of the Island of Formosa, were capturing much of the world’s trade with a clever imitation of Colombian hats, very fine and light, but of an inferior “straw” that has little durability.
Dawn, the next morning, found us clattering away down the cobble-stones of San Pablo, the gigantic key protruding from its swan-shaped hole until Santiago, the barber, saw fit to awake from his dreams of future glory. At the top of a range beyond we met the first pastusos, solemn-faced horsemen in winter garments and heavy ruanas of army blue. On the further slope and the rich uplands beyond there were many Indian hamlets, each thatched house in a little field of its own. The golden-brown grain of our homeland, the almost forgotten wheat, began to appear in patches on the hillsides, with little fenced threshing-floors of trodden earth, round and round which the peasants chased their unharnessed horses. Every family had its patch of wheat, corn, or potatoes, according to the altitude. Among the latter were many species unfamiliar to us of the north, some with red, pink, or purple blossoms, whole acres of one color; for we were nearing the original home of the potato. In his own slow way the Andean Indian still cultivates as in the days of the Incas many varieties unknown to the world at large, among others one shaped like the “double-jointed” peanuts of baseball fame, almost liquid inside.
