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06 March 2013
Copies of “sombreros vueltiaos,” a traditional, wide-brimmed Colombian hat whose name means “hat with lips” in Colombian Spanish, have been made and imported to Colombia by Chinese manufacturers. Local media reports in Bogota say that more than a million of the hats, traditionally woven by Zenu indigenous people primarily in the town of Tuchín in northern Colombia, have been imported. The hat became a collective mark and Zenu weaving a denomination of origin in 2011; the country’s Congress declared the hat a national culture symbol in 2004.
Versions of the hat made in Tuchín are made from natural cane fibres and sell for as much as 150,000 Colombian pesos (US$85); Chinese copies, often made of plastic, sell for as little as COP10,000 (US$5).
Zenu leaders have asked the government to provide protection from the Chinese imports, but an intellectual property blog written by the American University College of Law in Washington notes that the Chinese imports entered Colombia legally.
“Colombian laws allow the importation and distribution of hats subject to the payment of standard tariffs; thus, without any monitoring, the Chinese hats made it through Colombian customs and onto local markets, particularly in Cartagena, without breaking any law,” the blog reported.
Sergio Diaz Granados, the Minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism, announced on a television news programme that the government would ban the importation of vueltiao hats from China and elsewhere because of the impact such imports were having on local artisans, and that imports would be stopped by customs officials.
