FluidArts: Dissolving the Digital Divide


This is something I want to follow up on... I am sending it to you for
posting on the template (or somewhere) as work in progress/development so
it does not fall through the cracks....


Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 19:16:21 -0800
>From: luke ryland 
>X-Accept-Language: en
>MIME-Version: 1.0
>To: Deborah Phelan 
>Subject: Re: Guayana Hammocks Cyberbusiness threatened
>
>deb -am running a million miles an hour - off 2 DC 2morrow - will *try* 2
>get 2
>ur stuff soon
>
>sorry
>
>luke
>
>Deborah Phelan wrote:
>
>> Note: These hammocks referred to by curator of British Museum as one of the
>> finest examples of art they have collected over the past century!!!!
>>
>> South America Outreach --- An interesting example of the problems
>> developing when local artists try to market their creations via the
>> internet.... some great resources here for funding, developmnent,
>> contacts.....
>>
>> March 28, 2000
>>
>> LETHEM JOURNAL
>> Weavers Go Dot-Com, and Elders Move In
>>
>> By SIMON ROMERO
>>
>> ETHEM, Guyana -- This village in the remote southern savannas, little more
>> than an airstrip and scattered mud huts, could easily be taken for one of
>> those far-flung places untouched by the digital revolution.
>> It had no phones until two years ago, and the concept of paying with money
>> is still quite foreign to many residents.
>>
>> Claudio Edinger for The New York Times
>> The women of Lethem, Guyana, sold 17 hammocks around the world last year
>> for as much as $1,000 apiece. A power struggle has developed.
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> But it was in this community of 2,000 people that an organization formed by
>> indigenous women of two tribes revived the ancient art of hand-weaving
>> large hammocks from locally grown cotton -- and then took their exquisite
>> wares online. They hired a young member to create a Web site. And last
>> year, they sold 17 hammocks to people around the world for as much as
>> $1,000 apiece, gigantic sums in these parts.
>> Perhaps too gigantic. The foray into electronic commerce created tension
>> between the weavers and the traditional regional leadership in the same
>> way, perhaps, that many a geeky start-up has sent shivers down the spines
>> of corporate titans. Threatened by the women's success, regional leaders
>> moved in and took control of the weavers' organization. The woman who
>> created the Web site quit in a fury, and the group has been struggling
>> since then to get by.
>> "It is the classic tale of old power reacting to new power," said Terry
>> Roopnaraine, an expert on the indigenous population here who teaches at
>> Cambridge University. "When you bring in the Internet and start to empower
>> people, that doesn't maintain the status quo. So the status quo quite
>> rationally reacts to defend its interests."
>> Guyana, the lone English-speaking country in South America, illustrates the
>> effects of decades of economic isolation. Rickety Land Rovers dating from
>> before 1966, when the country gained independence from Britain, vie for
>> space on unpaved roads with old British-built army trucks.
>> The indigenous peoples here are known as Amerindians, to distinguish them
>> from the majority population, descendants of indentured servants from
>> India. The Amerindians rely heavily on help from international aid
>> organizations. A worker with one group, Matthew Squire of Britain's
>> Voluntary Service Overseas, was instrumental a decade ago in reviving
>> hammock making by Amerindian women of the Rupununi, as this region is
>> called.
>> Using 19th-century accounts and illustrations of the hammocks made by
>> European travelers, Mr. Squire and several women reintroduced the process,
>> from cultivating the cotton on small family plots to weaving the
>> brown-and-white hammocks. "This was something that was untainted by the
>> rest of the world that was still alive in memory," said Mr. Squire, who now
>> lives in Sussex, England.
>> By the mid-90's, the weavers, 300 women from the Wapishana and Macushi
>> tribes known as the Rupununi Weavers Society, had sold a hammock to the
>> British Museum in London. The museum called it "one of the most perfect
>> forms of indigenous art we have purchased this century."
>> Still, there were obstacles in transforming the production into a modern
>> venture. The Rupununi is linked to the capital, Georgetown, by an unpaved
>> road that can take days to traverse. The small airstrip here makes flights
>> possible, but costly. And because the concept of money was foreign, the
>> weavers' society had to devise how to compensate members with alternatives.
>> One preferred currency is salt, used to preserve meat.
>> Two years ago, as the weavers tried to sell their hammocks to museums and
>> collectors by mailings through an unreliable postal service, Guyana
>> Telephone and Telegraph installed telephone lines here using an innovative
>> satellite system.
>> A few months later, the chief executive of the company, Bill Humphries, an
>> American, offered the weavers society two telephone lines, free Internet
>> access and $12,000 worth of equipment, including a desktop computer and a
>> scanner.
>>
>> The New York Times
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> "It was a marvelous opportunity to get good publicity and free
>> advertising," said Mr. Humphries, now an executive with a
>> telecommunications company in Nashville, Tenn.
>> Someone was needed to coordinate maintaining a Web site capable of
>> marketing the hammocks. The phone company paid for Sharla Hernández, a
>> promising young member of the group and a protégée of Mr. Squire, to go to
>> Georgetown to learn about the Internet.
>> After Ms. Hernández returned here with knowledge of the Web, the enterprise
>> took off. Since mid-1998, the society has sold 20 hammocks over the
>> Internet. Although their prices seem high here, they are not much
>> considering that an estimated 600 hours of work goes into each hammock.
>> For the powers of Lethem, though, Ms. Hernández and the weavers were
>> perhaps too successful, bringing attention and potentially substantial
>> income to people who under the existing leaders have known only poverty and
>> powerlessness.
>> "We became a huge threat," Ms. Hernández, 21, with a fashionable haircut
>> and the colorful clothing of an American college student, said in an
>> interview. Accelerating a push to gain power over the organization, a push
>> that began even before telephones and the Internet arrived, establishment
>> figures like Muacir Baretto made a successful effort to take control of the
>> weavers' society.
>> Mr. Baretto is the Rupununi district chairman, an elected post similar to a
>> state governor in the United States, and a former "touchau," or chief, of
>> his village near Lethem.
>> A soft-spoken Amerindian of 47, he rides a Chinese-built motorcycle around
>> town. Like other members of the country's political class, he received part
>> of his education in Moscow when Guyana had Communist leanings after gaining
>> independence.
>> Mr. Baretto said in an interview that one lesson he brought back from
>> Moscow was "that the socialist economic model was not viable."
>> "But I also learned that strong leadership was necessary for any
>> organization to function properly," he said.
>> Using his influence, Mr. Baretto persuaded the weavers' society to elect
>> him chairman, although the group began as a nongovernmental entity with
>> support from international aid organizations intent on keeping such
>> operations separate from government.
>>
>> Claudio Edinger for The New York Times
>> A telephone executive offered the weavers two lines, free Internet access
>> and $12,000 of equipment, including a computer and scanner.
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> He has since stepped down as chairman. But from behind the scenes, Mr.
>> Baretto remains the most influential management figure.
>> The struggle for power has not just been between the women who provide the
>> labor for the enterprise and the region's men. Shirley Melville, owner of a
>> general store that doubles as the main watering hole and money-lending
>> operation here, is a crucial member of the governing body.
>> "I'm here to make sure our culture is not damaged," said Ms. Melville, 40,
>> an Arawak Amerindian from another part of Guyana who has married into one
>> of the dynastic cattle-ranching families of the Rupununi.
>> Ms. Hernández said she felt that she was being marginalized and resigned
>> from the organization in February.
>> "I was made to cry by these people, especially once when Shirley told me,
>> 'You are a twinky little thing and I am a tiger, so you watch out, girl,' "
>> Ms. Hernández said.
>> Since her resignation, the weavers' society has had just one inquiry about
>> buying a hammock over its Web site, www.gol.net.gy/rweavers.
>> For people used to a bitter economic existence, the turn of events is
>> perhaps no surprise. "We women do most of the work and the men get
>> rewarded, so what is the difference here?" a weaver, Violet Eusebio, asked.
>> Joyce Clement, another member of the organization who grows cotton and
>> works as a weaver, said of Mr. Baretto: "He's a one-quarter leader
>> providing one-quarter results. The Internet, the phones, they've brought
>> attention to the society that is being used for self-interest."
>> But Mr. Baretto sees it differently. "Regardless of what has happened and
>> been said," he said, "we have the best interests of the society's members
>> at heart."
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Related Sites
>> These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times
>> has no control over their content or availability.
>>
>> *       www.gol.net.gy/rweavers
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>--
>____________________________
>Luke Ryland
>luke@GiftedU.com
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>voice/fax: 708 575 5311