Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. So there's this video
Speaker 1: I want to tell you about. It's from a high
Speaker 1: end Italian garment company called Loro Piano, and it's set
Speaker 1: to this ethereal music and it shows the softly lit,
Speaker 1: dramatic footage of the Andes Mountains. The goal is to
Speaker 1: give an impression of how the company sources and processes
Speaker 1: its most valuable material, the wool of a wild lama
Speaker 1: like creature called the vicunya. You see them running free
Speaker 1: in the video. You hear the faint sound of hoofs
Speaker 1: beating against dry mountain soil, and you see shots of
Speaker 1: indigenous communities who have lived with the vicuna since the
Speaker 1: days of the Incas the company, Loro Piano doesn't say
Speaker 1: anything in the video. In fact, there's no dialogue at all,
Speaker 1: and as my colleague Marcelo rosche Brun, Bloomberg's Lima bureau chief,
Speaker 1: told me, that's part of the company's appeal.
Speaker 2: What Lorda Piano is known for is that they make
Speaker 2: what is now known as quiet luxury. That is, garments
Speaker 2: that are really expensive, really looks serious, but they don't
Speaker 2: necessarily look that shiny, or they don't necessarily look that
Speaker 2: different than any other garment you might have. It's sort
Speaker 2: of a very subtle if you know, you know, this
Speaker 2: is very expensive.
Speaker 1: The brand is known for these kinds of understated, high
Speaker 1: quality items. A pair of their cashmere sweatpants will run
Speaker 1: you about three grand. Kendall roy Or a logo list
Speaker 1: loro piano baseball cap on the TV show Succession, and
Speaker 1: the sweaters they make from the wool of the galloping
Speaker 1: Vikunyas in the video have price tags upwards of nine
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. But intertwined with its quiet luxury are the
Speaker 1: fates of some of the poorest communities in Peru.
Speaker 2: Viquinyas live very high. They can live at twelve thousand feet.
Speaker 2: Indigenous communities that live in the end is at twelve
Speaker 2: thousand feet and to be very poor. There has to
Speaker 2: be a big contrast here between the wealth of the
Speaker 2: people who live near Vicunas and the people who get
Speaker 2: to wear Vicuna garnments. What happens if I actually follow
Speaker 2: this connection? What would I find today?
Speaker 1: On the show? An Italian fashion company, a once endangered
Speaker 1: South American species, a remote Andean community, and a plan
Speaker 1: that was supposed to help them all prosper and why
Speaker 1: thirty years later it hasn't exactly worked out that way.
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg News. Getting close enough to catch and share of
Speaker 1: acunya is not easy.
Speaker 2: They are way faster than a human.
Speaker 1: It's a process indigenous communities have been refining since the
Speaker 1: days of the Incan Empire.
Speaker 2: So indigenous communities will usually share vicunyas once a year,
Speaker 2: and so they called this a chaku, which is a
Speaker 2: ketcher where that has been in use for centuries.
Speaker 1: Marcelo made the ten hour trip from Lima to Lucanas,
Speaker 1: a town in the southern Andanties, to see a chaku
Speaker 1: up close.
Speaker 2: We actually walked all these miles in this part of Peru,
Speaker 2: which is called Pampa Galleas, which is a national reserve
Speaker 2: dedicated to the Vicunyans, and it is at about twelve
Speaker 2: thousand feet and it is really intense work to be
Speaker 2: able to walk miles and miles closing in on Vicunyans
Speaker 2: at this altitude. I don't know how easy it is
Speaker 2: to picture this, but it's a huge triangle with miles
Speaker 2: in length, and you carry a rope or a fence
Speaker 2: and you start closing in on the animals. You are
Speaker 2: surrounding their territory from far away, a distance enough that
Speaker 2: vicunyas will initially not realize that they are being encircled.
Speaker 2: But that is what is happening here, just making the
Speaker 2: circle or this triangle smaller and smaller as you go.
Speaker 2: So what you see is that as humans are walking
Speaker 2: in in one direction, the viquinas were just running in
Speaker 2: the other there and what's on the other side is
Speaker 2: a cage, so they will just walk into there and
Speaker 2: be trapped.
Speaker 1: And once they get to the cage, workers are waiting
Speaker 1: for them. I asked Marcelo whether he had touched a vacunya.
Speaker 2: I have touched a vikunya. I don't think the viqunya
Speaker 2: enjoyed it. But they are so soft, they're so fluffy.
Speaker 2: It feels like you're touching a cloud, like and I
Speaker 2: know that nobody knows what. Yeah, you cannot touch a cloud,
Speaker 2: but it's just in my head. It's like the idea
Speaker 2: of what it would feel if you could touch a cloud.
Speaker 1: It takes a small group of people to share a vacunya.
Speaker 1: One to grab the head and one to grab the legs.
Speaker 1: They take the vicunyas, lay them on their sides and
Speaker 1: hold them down as someone else shears layers of their
Speaker 1: golden brown bowl. Then the workers flip the vicunya back
Speaker 1: up onto its feet and it goes running off back
Speaker 1: into the wild, stunned and stressed, but otherwise unharmed. At
Speaker 1: the Chaku Marcelo attended. The man overseeing the shearing was
Speaker 1: Abraham Waman. He's been working with the Kunyas in the
Speaker 1: community of Lucanas for almost twenty five years.
Speaker 3: Well, for me, it's like a treasure because sometimes an
Speaker 3: animal with wool runs the risk of poachers in other
Speaker 3: place is for example, there are poachers who kill the
Speaker 3: vicunyas and take their wool. They take the skin and
Speaker 3: the wool. But an animal that is already cheered, that
Speaker 3: doesn't have any wool left is basically a safe animal.
Speaker 1: In other words, a vicunya sheared is a vicuna saved.
Speaker 1: At one point, the animals were so heavily poached that
Speaker 1: the species was on the brink of extinction, and a
Speaker 1: bunch of Andian countries signed a treaty to protect.
Speaker 2: Them that said two key things. When was it banned
Speaker 2: any trade of vicunya wool for the foreseeable future until
Speaker 2: the species could recover somewhat, and then the other one
Speaker 2: was that it declared explicitly that vicunas would be used
Speaker 2: economically for the benefit of the people of the Andes
Speaker 2: in the future when the species.
Speaker 1: Had recovered and it worked. By the eighties, the population
Speaker 1: had rebounded and people started arguing that it was time
Speaker 1: to make the trade of a cunyu woll legal again.
Speaker 1: One of those voices was the maker of the nine
Speaker 1: thousand dollars sweater.
Speaker 2: And that's when Lorda Piana comes in, or at least
Speaker 2: when Loda Piano comes in in the modern history of
Speaker 2: the of the Vicunya, and they start to lobby the government,
Speaker 2: the proving government, trying to find a way to get
Speaker 2: legal access to the vicuna.
Speaker 1: Eventually, the government agreed they brought back the sale of
Speaker 1: a cuniu woll, with some conditions.
Speaker 2: So only communities legally recognized by the government who shared
Speaker 2: territory with vicunyas are able to capture and chear them.
Speaker 2: So a company like Loda Piana has to go through
Speaker 2: an indigenous community. The indigenous community will share the wold
Speaker 2: for free, and then Lorda Piana will buy that wol
Speaker 2: from the indigenous community, giving it significant cash for the
Speaker 2: economic progress of the place.
Speaker 1: The government ended up awarding one group of garment manufactures
Speaker 1: legal access to Vacunya woll.
Speaker 2: Lorda Piana wins this as part of a conglomerate that
Speaker 2: includes two other companies, but Lordapiana is that is the
Speaker 2: main one, and then Lorda Piana becomes the preeminent player
Speaker 2: in the new legal vicuna market. And in fact, the
Speaker 2: very first place where vicunas were shared legally once again
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety four was in Lucanas, the community that
Speaker 2: we visited.
Speaker 1: That first newly legalized vacunya sharing was a big deal,
Speaker 1: such a big deal that the President of Peru even attended.
Speaker 1: It marked the start of a promising new chapter in
Speaker 1: the history of Acunya Woll and the Andes. Under the
Speaker 1: new treaty, the Viacunya population was flourishing, the woll was
Speaker 1: creating a new source of income in Peru's poorest region,
Speaker 1: and Laura Piana had a monopoly the world's most premium fiber.
Speaker 1: After the break, how it all fell apart leading up
Speaker 1: to the nineteen seventies, Vicunas were on the brink of extinction,
Speaker 1: but a treaty signed by many of the Andean nations
Speaker 1: to pause the trade of their wool helped the population
Speaker 1: roar back to life. The trade in vacunya wol resumed
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety four under provisions that the industry would
Speaker 1: be structured to benefit indigenous communities, but in two thousand,
Speaker 1: the Peruvian government made a change that would let private
Speaker 1: companies cut indigenous communities out of the vicuna wool market.
Speaker 1: The change made it possible for any landowner to shear
Speaker 1: the wool of a vicunya that set foot on their property.
Speaker 1: That meant companies could buy cheap land in the Antes
Speaker 1: and shear vicunas without having to pay indigenous communities.
Speaker 2: This change was made in the year two thousand by
Speaker 2: a man called Alfonso Martinez.
Speaker 1: Alfonso Martinez was the head of the government office that
Speaker 1: was created to regulate the new vicunya wall market, and
Speaker 1: records show that behind the scenes he lobbied hard for this.
Speaker 2: Change, and Alfonso Martinez goes on a few years later
Speaker 2: to become the CEO of Loda Piana in Peru.
Speaker 1: After the change in regulation and with Alfonso Martinez. Leading
Speaker 1: up their Peruvian operations, Loro Piana bought about five thousand
Speaker 1: acres of land in the Andes near Lucanas.
Speaker 2: What that land enables you to do is you can
Speaker 2: put some vicunas in there and then you can fence
Speaker 2: the area, and this is allowed by Peruvian law, but
Speaker 2: it is a system that ensures that those vicunas cannot
Speaker 2: leave your land and that they cannot be shared by
Speaker 2: anybody else. And so Loda Piana has records show about
Speaker 2: two thousand vicunas in this part of Peru that it
Speaker 2: cheers every year. The records are public because they have
Speaker 2: to be filed with the Wildlife Regulator, and so Loda
Speaker 2: Piana is able to get this vicuna fiber without having
Speaker 2: to pay for it, either to any indigenous community or
Speaker 2: to anybody else.
Speaker 1: Does that fly in the face of the intent of
Speaker 1: the original treaty, which was supposed to allow indigenous communities
Speaker 1: to economically benefit from the vicunas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it definitely creates a competitor for the vicunya market.
Speaker 2: Indigenous communities used to have this source of revenue in
Speaker 2: the vicunya, but now it turns out that companies can
Speaker 2: go and get their own in a way like the
Speaker 2: property of the vicunya is officially still in the hands
Speaker 2: of the state. You cannot have you cannot own vicunas.
Speaker 2: But what you have our rights to use the fur,
Speaker 2: the fiber that those animals have. And so now you
Speaker 2: have companies being able to share that fiber because they
Speaker 2: are they have privately owned land and they have vicunas
Speaker 2: in there.
Speaker 1: Lro Piana's permit to start sharing vacunyas on its own
Speaker 1: land was approved in twenty and since then it's been
Speaker 1: buying less vacunia wool from Lucanas and paying lower prices
Speaker 1: for what it does buy. All of this has meant
Speaker 1: less money for the community. Records show that in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: Loro Piana paid the community nearly four hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: for vacuna wool. Seven years later, the company bought only
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth. Meanwhile, the prices
Speaker 1: Loro Piana charges for its vacuna garments, like the nine
Speaker 1: thousand dollars sweaters and thirty three thousand dollars coats, have
Speaker 1: only continued to climb. Marcelo asks Abraham Woman, the man
Speaker 1: leading the sharing in Lucanas about how that gap feels.
Speaker 2: Comotesas and tipto, proper conditions sink and fifteen.
Speaker 3: It's a deception something we feel in this community and
Speaker 3: other communities. They buy it at a low price but
Speaker 3: sell it at a higher price after transforming it into
Speaker 3: vacunyabole garments.
Speaker 1: Marcelo reached out to Lro Piana and they said, quote,
Speaker 1: since it arrived in Peru in the eighties, Laura Piana
Speaker 1: has been committed to upholding the highest standards of ethical
Speaker 1: and responsible business practices. Laura Piana represents a key economic
Speaker 1: support locally protecting and fortifying the demand and the value
Speaker 1: of the vacuna fiber regardless of market dynamics. So is
Speaker 1: there another path here? Could the local community make money
Speaker 1: from the vacuna wool without working with existing brands. Why
Speaker 1: can't indigenous communities just process the wole they're sharing on
Speaker 1: their own and sell their own luxury garments.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is one of the keys to the issue, right,
Speaker 2: And there are two problems here. One of them is
Speaker 2: just lack of access to resources. Spinning vicuna fiber is
Speaker 2: not easy just because it is so fine. Indigenous communities
Speaker 2: are very good at weaving alpaca. They can weave lama,
Speaker 2: but in the case of the vicuna, it is both
Speaker 2: very fine and very short. The fibers themselves are not
Speaker 2: that long, so you need very expensive machinery that is
Speaker 2: not common available because vicunia is so rare. And then
Speaker 2: the second challenge is that even if an indigenous community
Speaker 2: could have access to this machinery could make garments, it
Speaker 2: is hard to sell elite products that are worth thousands
Speaker 2: of dollars unless you have the right marketing, the right connection,
Speaker 2: the right reputation. I think the story about the vicuna
Speaker 2: is emblematic of a lot of struggles in countries like
Speaker 2: Peru and other countries in the Global South about having
Speaker 2: raw materials, being the producer of important and expensive raw materials,
Speaker 2: but then not being able to capture the value of
Speaker 2: what those materials are worth when they are converted into
Speaker 2: something else.
Speaker 1: So has this treaty, the Vicunya Convention worked.
Speaker 2: The treaty is still in place. The Vicuna population has
Speaker 2: grown very significantly in recent years. Prue's last Vicunya census
Speaker 2: was in twenty twelve and it had two hundred thousand Vicunas.
Speaker 2: So compare that to what it had in the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties and sixties, when the entire world population of Yukunyas
Speaker 2: was ten thousand. It has increased massively, so it is
Speaker 2: a successful case of the preservation of his species on
Speaker 2: the brink of extinction. But on the other hand, as
Speaker 2: it led to the progress of the people of the Andes,
Speaker 2: you cannot say that it has done very much. The
Speaker 2: Andes remained the poorest region in the entire country and
Speaker 2: people are still working mostly as subsistence farmers.
Speaker 1: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by David Fox. It was edited
Speaker 1: by Caitlin Kenny and Daniel Ferrara, with additional support from
Speaker 1: Aaron Edwards. It was mixed by Ben O'Brien. It was
Speaker 1: fact checked by Stacy Renee. Our senior producers are Naomi
Speaker 1: Shavin and Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole Beemsterbor is our executive producer.
Speaker 1: Sage Bauman is our head of Podcasts Special Thing. Thanks
Speaker 1: to Julianne Wilkinson and Bianca Rosario Ramirez. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Please follow and review The Big Take wherever you listen
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