How I learned the ancient alpaca weaving techniques with the Women Weavers of Chinchero.

Story and Photos by Carla Bragagnini

Our welcome into the weavers’ collective includes a smile and a mug of coca-leaf tea. I can’t think of a friendlier gesture at these soaring altitudes (coca eases its affects). Chinchero, a rural Quechua weaving town not far from Cusco, sits comfortably (but nauseatingly) at more than 3,700 metres above sea level. That’s high, and nausea can be an effect of altitude.

(As an aside: if you’re not able to visit Chinchero if ever you’re in Peru, I recommend the Center for Traditional Textiles in Cusco, which promotes the tradition’s survival and ensures 80 percent of funds raised go to the Center’s weavers, who come from 10 communities, including Chinchero.)

The handcrafted textiles the women weavers of Chinchero, Peru are known for.

The altitude isn’t a problem for locals, who have adapted to life in these oxygen-depleted mountain conditions. The descendants of the Incas in this region still carry out many of their ancient practices, including farming and weaving. Female weavers have worked here for centuries, with techniques passed from generation to generation.

To encourage female financial independence and cultural conservation, the practice has seen a rise in recent years. The teaching aspect helps in preservation, and weavers start young; workshops are held for village girls after school and on weekends. And though weaving here is associated with women, elsewhere in the country (such as Lake Titicaca), it’s normal to find communities of male weavers. Before the demonstration, we stare intently at the various items on display.

“Does anyone know what this is?” Fiorella, our weaver-guide, dressed head-to-toe in the region’s traditional clothes, asks, breaking the ice by grabbing what appears to be a bone.

“No, it’s not a bone of a tourist who didn’t buy any alpaca goods to take home,” she says, with a hearty laugh from the crowd of a dozen or so tourists and potential shoppers.

“It’s actually a llama bone and it’s used in our weaving. You’ll see what I mean.

Alpacas are sheared (normally once a year), and their wool can be quite dirty. And since the weaving here is all done by traditional techniques, grocery-store detergent isn’t used to do it. Instead, a jabonera root (from the soapwort plant) is grated and mixed with hot water, creating a soapy mixture. To my surprise, it’s efficient. (It’s also used by locals for shampoo! The clean alpaca wool is then spun into yarn with a wooden handheld drop-spindle, or pushka. (It’s perfectly normal in Chinchero to see multitasking women spinning wool on spindles while walking down the street.)

Grating root, with all-naturally dyed wool on display.

All the yarn is naturally-dyed, which means local plants and even insects are used. Fiorella mercilessly smashes a cochineal insect (which lives on prickly pear plants) in front of us, producing a deep red colour stain on her fingers. She puts some on her lips, showing us it can be used as lipstick. When mixed with water, the insect produces a deep red pigment that dyes the wool when dipped into the bowl.

The red dye can also be used as lipstick!

Fiorella shows us that adding salt or lemon alters the pigments, resulting in various shades. Once you have a desired colour, you dip the yarn into the mixture, keeping in mind that soaking time affects the intensity of the colour. Collpa, a mineral found in the jungle, is used to hold the colour. The yarn is then hung to dry, until it’s spun a final time.

A handheld weaving loom many weavers in Peru use, known for their amazing precision.

The table in front of us is fully displayed with leaves, bark, moss, flowers, roots and vegetables, all of which can result in dyes in every colour. Once the brightly-coloured yarns are created, the women weave them into intricate textiles, and we learn that different villages and regions in Peru have their own iconography and patterns which have been passed through centuries.

Bones and sticks are used to create a back-strap loom. Fiorella also told us there’s an international airport coming near Chinchero for better access to Cusco, but the weavers with us today share their concerns at having steady traffic to the area that could impact their cultural traditions.

The dyed wool is hung to dry.

Then Fiorella leaves us with a final tip: in Peru, no tourist can leave without an alpaca souvenir—whether it’s a sweater, scarf, beanie or gloves found at markets all over the country. And it’s possible, she says, to tell the type of alpaca wool used by its feel. (If the price is too good, you might actually have your answer!)

The wool used in most clothing or textiles you’ll find as you search for a souvenir ranges from mixes of alpaca with synthetic materials (usually heavy on synthetic) to pure alpaca wool, and the finest, least-itchy but most-expensive, baby alpaca. It’s the first and thus softest wool sheared from an alpaca, normally within its first two years of life.

It is very common to see women in Chinchero spinning their wool while walking the streets.

Alpaca wool feels cooler and is heavier than acrylic and mixed wool. When buying, check the inside of a garment — acrylic often gets brushed on the outside to appear softer, but the inside is rougher. You can also tell the wool’s purity by its colour, as alpaca wool dyed by natural processes has more muted colours than synthetic counterparts.

“So what do you think this is?” Fiorella asks, as one final test, as she passes around a sweater that feels a little light and coarse, indicating it contains synthetics.

“Baby alpaca? More like maybe alpaca,” she quips to another round of laughter. After a round of shopping, we leave with newfound appreciation for the art of weaving—but also with the survival skills to make it in the markets of Peru!

• Carla Bragagnini is associate editor of infromtheoutpost.com PERU.