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Weavers Go Dot- Com, and Elders Move In

BySimonRomero | Mar.28th,2000

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.

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.

''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 Hernandez, a
promising young member of the group and a protegee of Mr. Squire, to go to Georgetown to learn about the Internet.

After Ms. Hernandez 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. Hernandez 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. Hernandez, 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.

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. Hernandez 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.
Hernandez 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.''