The Money Market in Urubamba

It's generally accepted that access to money is key to development, but many Peruvians are too poor to even bother opening a bank account. In Urubamba, the vast majority of shops do not accept credit cards; the exceptions being the high-end hotels and restaurants. Tightening the money supply even further is people's almost universal reluctance to give change.

ATM's in Peru generally dispense S/50 and S/100 notes, worth about $17 and $34 respectively. However, a bottle of water or a ride in a mototaxi would only cost one sol in Urubamba (unless you get the tourist price.

Because the land is so fertile, many people are subsistence farmers, in addition to whatever odd-jobs they may do around town. (This is one reason it's been challenging to get artisans to show up at the market consistently.) As a result of the weak trade, many artisans make less than S/100 per month or $1 per day in cash. It's easy to understand why locals would have difficulty making change for large notes, but the slow velocity of money circulation is yet another impediment to economic development.

Juvenal Atau

Juvenal's wife Lucia makes these stuffed vegetables, chickens and turtles. She learned these designs during the three years she worked in Cusco. The stuffed chickens take approximately two days to make and are designed to be a centerpiece holding eggs.

Crispin Ocón

Señor Ocón - who is also Pilar's dad - manages this booth for his son who has been studying in Cusco for last three years. His son produces the sweaters and ponchos in Cusco and then brings to his father in Urubamba.

Pilar Ocón Rojas

Pilar has been weaving for 18 years. Her specialties are tapestries, shawls and ponchos. On average, it takes about two days to make a tapestry. Unlike other artisans, she does most of her work at the market and keeps a loom in her booth. Pilar has been the association's secretary since January. This month she is responsible for keeping an eye on the market while other artisans are away. She has three children: Kelvin, Liset and Josi.

Market Day

We hit the market today to get the artisans thinking about Sunday's election. Hopefully, we'll have enough motivated candidates to fill all the positions. It was great to see more than half the stalls open for business today. But, in reality there were only 7 or 8 artisans working there.

We're starting a series of artisan profiles on the blog with the first few to come today. Since all the products are handmade, it's nice to know whose hands they are.

Weekly Meeting with Mario

Melissa and I just had our weekly meeting with Mario, and to our pleasant surprise, he brought along the association's secretary and treasurer. All three of them were enthusiastic about the progress we made at last week's membership meeting. Mario was impressed that the membership approved the new structure on the same day it was presented. It was great to hear how much they appreciated our help.

There were some specific questions about the upcoming election:
- How would it be run?
- Could someone hold more than one position?
- Would the existing members of the junta directiva (board of directors) be the only ones eligible for the positions on the new junta directiva?

Mario is eager to get the workshops underway, so I felt bad telling him no progress had been made since the designer was on vacation. But his enthusiasm gives me some confidence that the workshops could continue (once started) without constant support from NeVo.

Melissa and I are going by the market tomorrow to answer questions about the election and to ask artisans what words they'd most like to know in English. Then we'll prepare a phonetic vocabulary sheet.

Mario also asked for help working with the municipality and the association's tourism managers to reach out to tour groups. I'm not sure what the status of this project is, but I did tell him that we'd be happy to help them work with municipality.

This week's goals

1. Sunday's Election
I've got a meeting with the president of the artisan's association today and I'd like to get a sense of what positions people are most interested in running for and figure out if there will be any real competition for the positions. There are a dozen new positions and the association only has 60 members, so I'm hoping that every position gets filled by an enthusiastic artisan.

2. Getting "La Plata" (the money) for the Workshops
We've got a great designer, Pati, who's agreed to offer workshops for the artisans, and the city has offered to pay, but we need to work with her to write the agreement between the city and artisans' association. Once she writes her proposal, Mari - our coordinator in Lima - will edit it and I'll present it to the deputy mayor, hopefully on Thursday. Given the difficulty that Mari and I had tracking him down last week - when we had appointments - I'm just going to show up in the morning and wait him out.

3. Reaching out to Internet Retailers
New volunteer Melissa arrived yesterday and she'll begin reaching out to websites selling Peruvian handicrafts to give the artisans another sales channel. She's only initiating the process however since the artisans should be electing an internet sales manager this weekend. The goal is that she'll be able to train this person to take over in a month.

4. Teaching English Project
While we don't have enough volunteers now to have a full-time English teacher for the artisans, they have expressed an interest in learning English, so I'm going to put together a one-page Spanish-English vocab list of the most relevant words. I hope to find out what they are on Thursday.

5. Teaching Accounting
I need to take a closer look at any records the individual artisans have been keeping to get a sense of what kind of accounting would be most useful to them. They're not looking to raise money to grow their business at this point, and it's hard to imagine any of them reaching that level of success in the next two years, so I'm thinking financial accounting is not going to be as useful as managerial accounting. This is definitely going to test my business Spanish.

6. New Project: Improved Town Map
Conny - our Urubamba coordinator - recently stumbled across a city map. It's pretty obvious that a major problem the market has is location. It's not wildly out of the way. It's right next to the bus terminal, but on the opposite side of the all the restaurants. A map for tourists would be tremendously helpful. I'm no cartographer, so when Conny dropped of the map, I thought it would actually be possible for me to make a map including the market.