A visit to a craft un-fair!

I’m not a normal girl. Maybe you aren’t either. Normal girls—I should say stereotypical girls—are supposed to live to shop, to have a closet overflowing with beautiful outfits, and shoes enough to embarrass Imelda Marcos. They will shop to assuage boredom, stave off depression, raise self esteem. I hate to shop so much that I pretty much wear what people have given me. As such, my style changes frequently depending on whose sartorial taste cloaks my body.

I think this extreme distaste for shopping has to do with my equally passionate distaste for the United States’ insane consumer culture. We, and our children, are inundated daily with advertisements for the latest must haves. I mean, how could anyone be happy without the latest Dooney wallet or electronic gizmo? If you saw the video The Story of Stuff, you probably agree that we are out of control with our gluttonous consumption of global resources.

There are a couple of exceptions to my rigid anti-consumerism. I love scarves and purses. I love Doc Martens and Prana pants. And I love love love authentic native crafts, wherever they may be found. Of course, our country is not content to keep its marketing efforts within its own borders. As a result, many indigenous cultures, especially the youth, have attempted to Westernize and have cheapened their own goods to have mass tourist appeal. In fact, many craft traditions are in danger of being lost all together.

In Cusco, Peru, I noticed that the indigenous children wear western-style clothing to school and elsewhere. Traditional Peruvian clothing is mostly worn as ceremonial garb these days. And the women who do wear brightly-colored traditional garb and weave on backstrap looms appear to be rather ancient themselves.

In her new book Weaving in the Peruvian Highlands, Nilda Callanaupa Alvarez, who grew up in the traditional Andean community of Chinchero, explains why ancient traditions are threatened by extinction in many cultures. In cultures with dual populations—indigenous and European colonial— traditional cloth is seen as having little value. In fact, to wear traditional Quechua clothing into town is to invite prejudice, even scorn, from the more modern colonialists. Cloth is easy to come by, made from synthetic materials, woven by machines, dyed in unnatural hues, inexpensive to produce. Clothes produced in this way can bow to ever-changing fashion trends and can be easily tossed out with every new fad. When tourism hits an area, like Cusco, a stop on the way to Machu Picchu, no shortage of entrepreneurs step in, eager to fast-track native crafts that appeal to the uneducated and undiscriminating typical tourist palate.

But what about the more rural areas where Spanish colonial influence isn’t as pervasive? According to Nilda, if a woman is lucky enough to receive an education and attend university, it is usually a one-way ticket to the west. For those women who remained in their villages, weaving became a trade, not a form of cultural expression, and many cloth traditions and patterns were cast aside in the name of efficiency and market appeal.

Nilda Alvarez was the first woman from the Chinchero region to attend the university in Cusco. She was subsequently given a grant to study textile history at UC-Berkeley where her own weaving gained recognition. She discovered that there was, indeed, a market for traditional Peruvian textiles—history buffs and art collectors. The Quechua people were selling their own clothing and blankets to interested collectors for a fraction of their worth, and with little ability to could replace what had been lost.

Nilda decided to return to Cusco where she founded the Center for Traditional Textiles. She has spent nearly twenty years perfecting her own weaving skills, and teaching and encouraging Chinchero and other Andean communities to recapture the excellence of traditional weaving. In Nilda Alvarez’ words:

...each and every piece of cloth embodies the spirit, skill, and personal history of an individual weaver. Weaving is a living art, an expression of culture, geography, and history. It ties together with an endless thread the emotional life of my people.

Before I travel again I am going to thorougly research the history of local crafts, go off the beaten path to find authentic examples of them, and be prepared to pay a fair price. In fact, I am not going to buy anything in tourist mercados or from merchants at bus stops. Such vendors are hurting the effort to preserve native traditions, as many tourists can be satisfied with cheap imitations instead of living art.

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