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Overview
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.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781609380342 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Iowa Press |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2004 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 248 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Elayne Zorn is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Central Florida.
Read an Excerpt
Weaving a Future TOURISM, CLOTH, & CULTURE ON AN ANDEAN ISLAND
By ELAYNE ZORN
University of Iowa Press Copyright © 2004 University of Iowa Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-87745-916-3
Chapter One INTRODUCTION TOURISM, CLOTH, AND CULTURE
TAQUILE'S CHOICE
"We can only buy a few textiles," we told the Taquileans who had agreed to advise us which weavings to choose for the Brooklyn Museum's soon to be reinstalled Hall of the Americas. On that dazzlingly sunny Andean winter day in late July 2002, the brilliantly hued handwoven belts, shawls, and coca leaf purses were arrayed on the women's black shawls spread on the dirt and green stubble of a field (fig. 4). The colorful wool textiles contrasted with hundreds of shriveled corklike freeze-dried potatoes, or ch'uñu, sunning on dark cloths nearby. The ch'uñu reminded me that the primary occupation on the island of Taquile in southern Peru remains subsistence farming, even though people from Taquile create some of the finest textiles in the Andes.
The terraced field we gathered in lay directly below the hand-built home of Taquile's enthusiastic young Cultural Promoter, Juan Quispe Huatta. Juan had coordinated my trip to Taquile with Nancy Rosoff, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of the Arts of the Americas, Brooklyn Museum, via e-mail and cell phone. This task was quite a challenge because Taquile still has no electricity, except for a few solar-powered installations, and using e-mail requires a three-and-a-half hour motorboat trip to a mainland Internet café in Puno.
Our quest for textiles began after an enormous lunch of white rice and crispy Lake Titicaca fried trout followed by pungent herbal muña tea in the Quispes' chilly formal dining room. We paused to thank Francisca Huatta (Juan's mother) and María Huatta (his wife), who had cooked the meal but, I knew, would eat separately in the kitchen. I had hoped to spend some time with Juan's female relatives to catch up in Quechua on news as well as to ask about a recent big meeting concerning tourism, but they gently hurried us outside to look at the textiles they hoped to sell.
In the photograph are twelve Taquileans. They are from three intermarried, extended families, and they range in age from an older teenager to individuals in their late fifties. Also in the photograph is a representative from the Brooklyn Museum (Georgia de Havenon, to the far right, partly hidden). Just before this photograph was taken, Nancy and I were talking about the Brooklyn Museum project with my compadre "Pancho" Huatta (standing to the right, in profile). Pancho is my host and a friend of several decades. When we spoke with him, we also addressed Juan and Julio Quispe (Juan's father) and the younger men who in the photograph are behind the tall bunch grass, sitting quietly.
Meanwhile Wilton Callañaupa, a serious young Cusco college student who spoke Quechua and was working with us on the project, started filming several women who had set up their looms in an adjoining field, the preferred Andean weaving site. The front edge of such a loom is barely visible as small upright bars in the center of figure 4. I noticed that the weavers' traditional Andean-type ground loom (fig. 5) was like one modified for indoor use by members of the "Natives of Taquile" Folklore Association in 1994, working with staff from the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Various men and women walked up and placed textiles on the shawls on the ground. My perpetually busy friend Alejandrina Huatta, daughter of my compadre Pancho and one of my first weaving teachers, had arrived carrying additional textiles with her husband Alejandro Huatta, one of Taquile's master boat builders. In figure 4, they are to the left, laying out one of Alejandrina's excellently woven wedding shawls. I still hadn't met everyone, and had many questions, but I was busy translating between Spanish and Quechua and taking photographs and notes.
Initially the Taquilean men gathered around the textiles, while the women sat weaving farther away at their Andean looms. Typical of almost any group interaction when tourists are not present, the Taquileans good-naturedly joked in Quechua almost nonstop. A few men gently jostled for position, before the younger men went to sit on the side, near the tall bunch grass. All the people were of course interested in what Nancy, as curator, would select. I suggested asking the Taquileans to choose which textiles we should buy, because they are, after all, the expert weavers, but also because I was interested to learn what they would recommend.
The situation was a little awkward because they would be judging textiles that included their own or their relative's. Also, such judging was both artificial and routine. I was well aware that people judged textiles all the time in private, and in small groups, since seemingly everything everyone wears is noted and critically evaluated. Taquileans also judge textiles when pricing them for sale in their community cooperative store. Furthermore, tourists evaluate textiles daily when considering what to buy. I knew that in South America's tiny handful of successful textile cooperatives public judging was integral to the development and maintenance of high standards. I also realized that there were potential conflicts of interest because money is very scarce in the impoverished Andean altiplano and everyone present certainly would be happy to have a guaranteed sale at the presumably good price that the Brooklyn Museum could offer. Within Peru, our request for their advice was still rather unusual because while indigenous people may be invited to give folklore presentations, or sometimes demonstrate crafts, they rarely are consulted as experts.
When the women continued to sit at their looms rather than join the group of men beside the textiles, I quietly and jokingly encouraged them in Spanish and Quechua to come over to voice their opinions and vote too. I wanted to hear their opinions because women created the beautiful and technically complex textiles we were examining. Yet, although Taquilean women are astonishingly articulate visually, they rarely speak in public. But slowly, by ones and twos, the women stood up and came to stand as a group, to better see the textiles, and figure 4 records that moment.
Though all eight belts offered for purchase to the Brooklyn Museum clearly were examples of a single, distinctive regional substyle, numerous differences illustrated the ways that Taquilean weavers have been transforming "traditional" textiles since they began marketing them in the 1970s. Transformations included using purple instead of the usual red as the belts' main color, factory-spun instead of handspun yarns, double cloth instead of the more traditional complementary warp "pebble" weave, and densely packed representational and naturalistic images instead of more widely spaced abstract and geometric ones.
The astonishing quiet of the island without cars or electricity and set in vast Lake Titicaca, where sound travels immense distances, was interrupted by Juan's cell phone. Somewhat abashed, he broke away to answer. As people got ready to vote, we stopped again when someone pointed out that the afternoon boats were leaving the island for the mainland city of Puno. We walked to the edge of the field to quietly watch the vessels quickly become glittering specks in the shining water.
By that time there were thirteen Taquileans, so a decisive vote would be possible. There was no conversation but plenty of careful looking. After two minutes, each person voted aloud. Several of the younger men I didn't know commented that they liked one of the purple belts, but it was eliminated because of its nontraditional background color. I was intrigued by two belts with wide color stripes next to the central pattern stripe. The stripes made them look very different from other Taquilean belts, but they were well woven. I was somewhat surprised they too were quickly eliminated. Were the Taquileans concerned that these were not "representative" of Taquile, and therefore not "authentic"? Several people in the group had traveled to museums in Lima, Mexico, and the United States and thus had a sense of collections there. Taquileans have performed in folklore events in Peru, the United States, France, and Poland; they also have coped daily with mass tourism, and thus are well aware that the issue of authenticity is very important.
In the end, they chose an extremely well-woven example of a traditional- style belt to represent Taquile in New York. How much this determination was based on their preferences and how much on perceptions that Westerners ascribed a higher economic and aesthetic value to "traditional" weaving is unclear.
The selection process, including the decision to opt for a "traditional" weaving, reflects recent transformations in the production and uses of handmade cloth. The textile arts have been of singular importance in the Andes for thousands of years. Even now, handmade clothing remains central to racial and ethnic identity and cultural expression, while also serving as an important source of income for artisans. The production of textiles with symbolically meaningful geometric and representational images is the major form of expressive culture for indigenous women. Taquilean women are actively transforming textiles both in response to the tourist market, which has grown since the late 1970s, and to represent new ideas and experiences in their society.
The beautifully made clothing created and worn by Alejandrina, Juan, María, Francisca, Pancho, and Julio is part of what draws tens of thousands of visitors a year to their tiny island. Income from selling textiles has propelled Taquileans to develop a unique, world-renowned model for community control of tourism. However, this success also means that Taquileans increasingly purchase factory-spun yarns rather than bartering for fleece and handspinning the yarn themselves. During my 2002 trip, I also observed that many Taquileans have become so busy obtaining an education and attending to tourist-related businesses that they have far less time to weave than when I first visited in the mid-1970s.
How, I wondered, would they be able to maintain their traditional arts and customs while also working so hard to obtain the material comforts of modern society? How would women's increasing literacy and public assertiveness affect their creation of cloth, and the island society itself? Would Taquileans exert increasing power in their region due to Taquile's tourism clout, or would regional elites find ways to co-opt, ignore, or sidestep them? Would the positive Indian identity they were creating, through cloth and tourism, function as an antiracist strategy?
Faced with the same dilemmas that so many other rural indigenous people confront worldwide, could Taquileans manage to find an alternate path between what has long been posed as the seemingly irreconcilable choice between tradition and modernity? Would their community unravel due to the conflicts between these two extremes, or could they weave a new future that combined both? Many Taquileans were asking themselves the same questions.
TAQUILE
Approximately 1,700 Quechua-speaking people live on Taquile, located in the Andean altiplano (high plain) at 3,808 meters, or almost 13,000 feet, above sea level. Taquile is one of three permanently inhabited islands on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca. Before Taquileans began using motorboats in the 1970s, it took about eight hours to sail the 45 kilometers between Taquile and the nearest city, Puno on the mainland, and before sailboats, days to travel by reed boat. Taquileans identify themselves as runa, or Indians. All the people are related, and almost all share one of nine Quechua, Aymara, or Spanish surnames, including Quispe and Huatta. They are subsistence farmers using unirrigated agriculture in an arid region to grow potatoes, other Andean tubers, barley, broad beans, and some corn; they also fish in the lake. Their small, rocky island supports some sheep and cows. The community (Taquile ayllu) has two moiety ayllus ("upper" and "lower"); it still does not have electricity, running water, or a sewage system. It has an elementary school and a recently completed high school.
The Puno Region (formerly Department) is one of the poorest areas in the nation. Puno suffered, though not as much as other regions, during Peru's undeclared civil war of the 1980s and early 1990s that left some sixty thousand Peruvians (primarily peasants) dead or disappeared (Mayer 1992; Poole and Rénique 1992; Rénique 1994; Stern 1998). From the perspective of the creole elites of Peru's capital city of Lima and other metropolitan centers, as well as Puno's mestizo residents, the town and surrounding region are considered "wild" and violent, according to a nineteenth-century discourse that links geography, race, and character together (Orlove 1993). At the same time, Peruvians call Puno the "heart" of Peruvian folklore.
For many in Peru and Puno, Taquile represents the backwardness and isolation of native Andeans, considered distant heirs of the great Incas whose glory was forever lost with the Spanish Conquest. Taquileans thus are at the bottom of the social ladder in a region already marginalized within the nation, which in turn is marginalized in the wider world (Jacobsen 1993; Painter 1991; Smith 1991).
The period that I examine here (1976-2002) saw profound changes within Taquile, as well as within Peru. That country, destination of desire and mystery to many Europeans and North Americans for centuries, underwent a military dictatorship, democratic elections, a debt crisis, astoundingly high inflation, a violent undeclared civil war, cycles of floods and drought, a dictatorship in all but name, neoliberalism, and once again democratic elections. Peru transformed from a predominantly rural country of some 15.5 million people in 1976 to an urban nation of 27 million by 2000, in a process occurring throughout Latin America.
During this period, the population of Taquile increased from around 900 to 1,700, primarily the result of return migration, improved nutrition, and decreased mortality. (My impression is that most returning migrants came from Peru's Pacific coast, having left Taquile to earn cash and learn Spanish.) Many Taquileans now speak some Spanish in addition to Quechua, and quite a few are fluent in Spanish. The trip from the mainland city of Puno to the island now can be made in three or four hours by motorboat. Few girls studied at Taquile's primary school in 1976; now Taquile has a secondary school, and Taquileans, both males and females, are studying in high schools in Puno as well, while some are preparing to enter the university.
Some of the technological changes of the late twentieth century have helped Taquileans, along with other people in geographically isolated regions, to improve communication. Although there is no mail service and Taquileans are off the electrical grid, unable to get Internet service that some so desperately want, some families now have cell phones, and travel on the lake is less dangerous when help is, at least in theory, a phone call away.
Taquileans are conservative in some ways (they were late to build wooden sailboats, for example) but innovative in others (certain Taquilean families purchased title to their lands beginning in the 1940s, ahead of any other peasant community on that side of the lake).
CLOTH
Cloth was of paramount importance for pre-Conquest civilizations for more than three thousand years (Murra 1962; Rowe, Benson, and Schaffer 1979). Weaving remained important during the colonial period for the economies of both church and crown, and even though Andean textile production was transformed substantially, in virtually every way imaginable in terms of technology and iconography, rural Andeans continued to produce massive amounts of fine cloth. However, the combination of a series of factors in the twentieth century makes it surprising that today any Andeans weave at all. By factors I mean the almost complete collapse of the regional wool economies (Zorn 1997a, 1997b) that supplied raw materials to weavers, the discrimination that wearers of ethnic dress face throughout Peru and Bolivia, the difficulty of weaving while working in urban areas, and the relative low cost and ubiquity of factory-made clothing (especially used Western dress). Nonetheless, many Andeans still weave. In many areas, despite increased commoditization, cloth continues to hold local meanings, as commoditized arts do in Mexico (J. H. Cohen 1999, Stephen 1991b) and elsewhere. However, by the twenty-first century, as was clear to me during my trip to Peru and Bolivia in 2002, much highland weaving had ceased.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Weaving a Future by ELAYNE ZORN Copyright © 2004 by University of Iowa Press. Excerpted by permission.
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