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Transformations in Tapestry in the Ayacucho Region of Peru
Abstract
This article examines contemporary Peruvian tapestry in its historical context. Though tapestry production represents a significant source of income for weavers in Ayacucho, Peru, the contemporary industry has not yet been studied in the context of long-term Andean textile traditions and their historical transformations. Ayacucho is home to numerous crafts traditions, but also terrible violence during Peru’s undeclared civil war (1980–95), which started there. The paper provides an overview of contemporary Andean textiles, emphasizing differences between textiles woven on the pre-Hispanic type Andean loom, and those such as tapestry woven on the Hispanic-type treadle loom. The technology of Andean textile production (loom types, materials, yarn production, dyeing) is discussed. Andean tapestry is traced from its earliest appearances ca. 500 B.C., through its fluorescence in the Wari and Tiahuanaco empires, and the Inca empire, and production during the colonial and the little-known 19th century Republican period, with a focus on Ayacucho. The paper then analyzes Andean cloth today, especially forces leading weavers to stop making textiles. The final section presents a preliminary history of 20th century Ayacucho tapestry production, based on interviews with weavers and their family, and non-weavers involved in crafts development. It examines the work of individual weavers within social and political contexts in terms of violence and democracy in Ayacucho. The paper also examines how gender and race affect tapestry by analyzing the gendered division of labor in the tapestry industry, in which very few women weave, and the racism faced by weavers of indilgenous origin.
Este artículo trata de cómo un objeto religioso se volvió popular (en el sentido de "arte popular" o folclor) y de cómo se convirtió en un vehículo de opinión y de una modernidad que es multiforme y por ello diversifica los temas a representar y sus significados. Comienzo narrando un evento que presencié en agosto del 2001.
My interest in the valleys of Arequipa began in 1994. A curious set of textiles labeled Nasca was attributed to the "Sihuas" Valley, Nazca region, Peru, south coast." The iconography of these textiles was not Nasca but belonged to unidentified traditions. They most likely came from the Sihuas Valley in the department of Arequipa. In 1997 and 2000 I went to Arequipa to establish if their provenance indeed was the Sihuas Valley and other valleys in the department of Arequipa. This was confirmed in the field for the valleys of Sihuas and Vitor at four heavily looted cemeteries. In addition, early Nasca textile fragments and a fragmented Nasca 3 bowl were collected. Figure 1 shows the valleys of the department of Arequipa in relation to the cities of Lima and Arequipa, and the south coast that includes the Rio Grande the Nazca drainage, the Nasca heartland. Approximately 300 miles separate it from the valley of Sihuas.
Over several years 1 acquired a small archive of illustrations and photographs of the textiles in question in addition to those collected at the four cemeteries. I divided these textiles into seven groups based on a comparative analysis using differences in iconography, style, sequencing of colors and weaving techniques, where possible, as well as 34 Accelerator Mass Spectrometry radiocarbon dates. The temporal ranges of the identified traditions will be shown below in parenthesis. It will be followed by the number of dates available for each tradition. All dates presented in this article are corrected and at the 68% or 1 sigma confidence interval. Three of the groups are local traditions, named Siguas 1 (543 BC-AD 121; 10), Siguas 2 (AD 127-333; 2) and Siguas 3 (AD 144-775; 8). Early Nasca textiles from Arequipa (AD 55-428; 4) and provincial Pukara (AD 138-406; 3) form the fourth and fifth groups. The remaining two groups are proliferous early Nasca (AD 168-425; 2) allegedly from Arequipa and Siguas -3 Nasca (AD 405-541; 1). Siguas 1 has its beginnings in the Early Horizon (EH) and ends about AD 100, during the early Early Intermediate Period (EIP), with the almost simultaneous appearance of early Nasca, Siguas 2, Siguas 3, provincial Pukara and surprisingly proliferous early Nasca. Siguas 1 and 3 are local cultures and Siguas 2 may be a local reaction to early Nasca influence. Between AD 630-669 a Middle Horizon (MH) Wan tunic found its way to the site of Cornejo in the Sihuas Valley.
I was informed Siguas 1 textiles were found in the valleys of Sihuas, Quilca, Majes and Ocona. At the heavily looted cemetery 1 of La Chimba in the Sihuas Valley the author together with the archaeologists Romulo Pari Flores and Marko Lopez collected only fragments of Siguas 1 artifacts while cemetery 2 had Siguas 1, early Nasca and Siguas 3 remains. In the Majes Valley Siguas 1 is documented at Toro Muerto through illustrations of petroglyphs. In addition to the fragments collected at La Chimba, there is a significant body of Siguas 1 textiles in collections. In the absence of decorated pottery, the Siguas 1 culture is defined through textiles, engraved canes, pyroengraved gourds, copper pins in the shape of undulating snakes and petroglyphs.
Set in Arequipa during Peru's recent years of crisis, this ethnography reveals how dress creates gendered bodies. It explores why people wear clothes, why people make art, and why those things matter in a war-torn land. Blenda Femenías argues that women's clothes are key symbols of gender identity and resistance to racism. Moving between metropolitan Arequipa and rural Caylloma Province, the central characters are the Quechua- and Spanish-speaking maize farmers and alpaca herders of the Colca Valley. Their identification as Indians, whites, and mestizos emerges through locally produced garments called bordados. Because the artists who create these beautiful objects are also producers who carve an economic foothold, family workshops are vital in a nation where jobs are as scarce as peace. But ambiguity permeates all practices shaping bordados' significance. Femenías traces contemporary political and ritual applications, not only Caylloma's long-standing and violent ethnic conflicts, to the historical importance of cloth since Inca times. This is the only book about expressive culture in an Andean nation that centers on gender. In this feminist contribution to ethnography, based on twenty years' experience with Peru, including two years of intensive fieldwork, Femenías reflects on the ways gender shapes relationships among subjects, research, and representation.
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The people of Taquile Island on the Peruvian side of beautiful Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake in the Americas, are renowned for the hand-woven textiles that they both wear and sell to outsiders. One thousand seven hundred Quechua-speaking peasant farmers, who depend on potatoes and the fish from the lake, host the forty thousand tourists who visit their island each year. Yet only twenty-five years ago, few tourists had even heard of Taquile. In Weaving a Future: Tourism, Cloth, and Culture on an Andean Island, Elayne Zorn documents the remarkable transformation of the isolated rocky island into a community-controlled enterprise that now provides a model for indigenous communities worldwide. Over the course of three decades and nearly two years living on Taquile Island, Zorn, who is trained in both the arts and anthropology, learned to weave from Taquilean women. She also learned how gender structures both the traditional lifestyles and the changes that tourism and transnationalism have brought. In her comprehensive and accessible study, she reveals how Taquileans used their isolation, landownership, and communal organizations to negotiate the pitfalls of globalization and modernization and even to benefit from tourism. This multi-sited ethnography set in Peru, Washington, D.C., and New York City shows why and how cloth remains central to Andean society and how the marketing of textiles provided the experience and money for Taquilean initiatives in controlling tourism. The first book about tourism in South America that centers on traditional arts as well as community control, Weaving a Future will be of great interest to anthropologists and scholars and practitioners of tourism, grassroots development, and the fiber arts.
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