How It All Begins

Like his village, Manuel López Espinal seems to have stepped straight out of a novel by Gabriel García Márquez.  Solitude and fatality have conspired with time to mark his face, as they have marked the deserted streets of the little town of Pilé, with its thousand inhabitants.

The town, which is hidden away at the end of an interminable dust road, is home to the best straw weavers in the world: those who make the “montecristis”. These artisans with their golden hands have always woven knowledgeably, artistically, with the obstinacy of insistence on perfect work and an object that is unique. In his house built on stilts, made of wood and bamboo, Manuel who is one of the village’s maestros, has been weaving since the break of dawn. He knows his straw, which likes the softness of the early morning air and takes a shape perfectly as long as one avoids the hours of intense sunshine.

The Art of Weaving

Behind a wooden stand made of a shaft with three legs, which serves as a support for the form and for his hat, he weaves. His torso is supported by other forms which he has added so as to take his position more comfortable and maintain the piece he is working on. His head is lowered, and he is gazing into the straw as he works on it. His hands are sure, agile and infinitely gentle, moving quickly. He weaves with three fingers of each hand, whose nails are fine, hard and extremely long; these are the tools of his trade. To achieve the best shape, he dips the ends of his fingers from time to time in a little bowl of water placed beside him. This is how he keeps the straw damp. Like the other weavers of the village, Manuel awaits the sun. He will have worked for almost three hours in this morning. It will then be time, after a coffee, to go out and help in the fields. Weaving will not begin again until the evening, at the hour of prayer, when night falls and coolness returns to the air.

By the light of a bulb or a candle, the ancestral work will then recommence for several hours. For generations, this is what weaving has been all about.

An Old Trade - Panama Hat Weaving

The old weaver remembers having learnt his trade at the age of twelve, more than sixty years ago. He has never stopped since then, and has himself taught his children the secrets he learnt from his father. And so it goes life in this little town in a remote corner of the world. The night is full and the stars have invaded the sky of Pilé. It is fatigue that forces the artisan to call a halt. He covers the hat with a cotton cloth, which will protect it from dust and insects. He is proud of the color of his work: a soft uniform, luminous ivory color, which he hopes will be spotless and without the least imperfection.

He has chosen the straw himself; generally he buys it from María López de Delgado who lives just a few houses from his own. Maria does not do any weaving herself, her role is to treat the straw. She too learned he trade from her mother and will pass it on her children. This straw, the vegetable fibre called “toquilla” in this part of the country, grows at a few hours’ walk from here in this same province of Manabí, though also in the provinces of Guayas and Esmeralda. Its qualities, which are unique, are the result of a hot, damp climate and a coastal soil which is particularly fertile, rich in salt and lime.