The colors of Titicaca

At 4,000 meters above sea level, the inhabitants of Taquile have ensured that their weaving methods are immune to the passing of time. Today, their culture is a bastion of Inca wisdom, protected by

the mystical lake.

Published in Avianca Inflight Magazine

In Quechua culture, weaving is a gift and a sign of social status, and it is precisely the garments they wear that differentiate single people from married couples, and governors from the rest of the community.

In the midst of Titicaca’s infinite blue waters are six large islands, the third biggest of which is Taquile. It is home to around 2,000 people, who were relatively isolated from foreign culture until the 1950s and whose textiles the world did not discover until the mid-seventies.

This textile art is a legacy of two great cultures that settled there: Tiahuanaco and Inca. The designs, details and techniques employed by these ancient Bolivian and Peruvian peoples have come together in the garments such as hats, waistcoats and shawls that the inhabitants of Taquile wear.

These masters of weaving seem to be suspended in the threads of time, and

although the island welcomes over 50,000 visitors every year, the community has done all it can to safeguard its indigenous traditions.

533 STEPS FROM THE SUN

The island of Taquile is reached by motorboat from the Peruvian town of Puno. After a journey of a little over an hour across the freezing waters of Titicaca, one of the island’s harbors can be glimpsed, and it is there that dozens of boats full of tourists from all over the world arrive.

Only 533 stone steps separate those tourists from the small town’s main square, but at this height above sea level every one of them marks a victory over altitude sickness. On the way, the typical Inca crop terraces can be seen, as well as locals who run from house to house in their rush to attend their visitors.

A church in the main square bears testimony to the fact that the Spaniards once passed through these lands. Not only did they leave a profound mark in the form of the faith the locals profess (most are Catholics), they also stripped their ancestors of their typical Inca garments and made them dress like typical Catalan peasants.

However, apart from this glimpse into the colonial past, those white blouses, black shawls and pants that they inherited from the Spaniards serve to emphasize even more the amazing Taquile textiles that refuse to die and whose techniques are handed down from generation to generation.

SPINNING STORIES

In 2005, Taquile textile art was declared a ‘Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity’ by UNESCO, and today dozens of studies illustrate the importance of this cultural activity in Inca life and in the survival of this people’s values.

Men and women alike learn to weave by hand from an early age. In Quechua culture, weaving is a gift and a sign of social status, and it is precisely the garments they wear that differentiate single people from married couples, and governors from the rest of the community.

Because of the importance that is placed on the stitching, every Taquile garment has a meaning. A chullo, for example, is a knitted woolen cap made by men; caps for married men have illustrations of birds and butterflies on them, and they are made on a rustic loom called a waita awana that they have made themselves.

Married men are less free to wander around the town, and this is why they spend their time close to the loom, not only making cloth but also taking care of the family. Single men, on the other hand, make a chullo that has earflaps and whose top part is white and bottom part red. Each of these types of cap is so thick it can even withstand a heavy storm, so its owner’s head never gets wet.

Although males learn to weave from the age of eight, it is women who have made Taquile textiles known the world over. They will never weave a chullo on a waita awana, and it is single women who make skeins of fine lambswool thread and dye them red, the color most frequently used in their textiles.

Married women, meanwhile, use the female loom called the panpa awana (pedal loom), which consists of four stakes that form a rectangle almost a meter long, with a system for intertwining the lambswool or alpaca wool. Generally, as in many former Inca regions, women use one of these animals’ tibia bones to push the threads down and form the textile.

As there is a panpa awana in every house, women make colorful knapsacks or bags that they tie round their waist and in which they keep the coca leaves they chew, ponchos that they sell in the community store, or their calendar waistband depicting

agricultural cycles, rituals and events in their personal life, such as the death of a loved one or a wedding.

It is when women are about to get married that they spend three months making a chumpi, or sash, for their future husband, as a symbol of their acceptance of the ceremony; on it they weave various illustrations of their life together.

Many of these sashes or belts even have strands of the woman’s hair woven into them to demonstrate her commitment to the union, and they will also be useful to support her husband’s back, since beasts of burden are not allowed to be used on the island. The husband, meanwhile, may never remove it, since it is proof of his faithfulness.

Due to the perfection of the details and the fineness of the stitching, these two-sided belts look more like needlework than articles made on a loom, and various studies indicate that they are the result of family secrets handed down from one generation to the next in cryptic language.

Whatever the mystery might be that is hidden in them, all textiles from the island of Taquile are worthy examples of oral tradition and of the small town that is washed by the sacred waters of Titicaca.