Chinchero Community Visit And Weaving Demonstration

Wednesday, May 28
Start: Cusco 11,341′ (3457m)
Via: Chinchero 12,320′ (3755m)
Stop: Cusco 11,341′ (3457m)
Cusco walk 2.1 miles
Chinchero walk 1 mile
average O2 91%

I sleep in until after 6 am. I awake well rested and am ready for another day of adventure. The plan is that Ronnie is going to pick me up at 9:30 am and we will go to the community of Chinchero, which is Elizabeth’s home village. I head upstairs to the top floor restaurant for buffet breakfast just after 7 am. They have gluten free snacks for me again. Muru Homely Hotel is the absolute best!

I decide that I need to get some more soles so I make a quick trek to the bank to withdraw additional money. I leave about 7:45 am and it takes about an hour before I’m back at the hotel. Just enough time to catch my breath and regroup.

Ronnie arrives promptly and he’s got Luna with him too. Ronnie keeps Luna occupied in the front seat with food. We pull over one time to buy watermelon from a street vendor. As we arrive in Chinchero, Ronnie pulls over again at a bakery and buys Luna a sweet treat.

Chinchero sits at just over 12,000 ft. high on the Anta plains of the Sacred Valley and is about a 40 minute drive from Cusco. Chinchero is not only renowned for its weaving but is believed to be the mythical birthplace of the rainbow. Given its unique placement in the Andes Mountains and microclimate, rainbows are often visible during the rainy season. The rainbow is also represented in the colors of their traditional weaving.

Before the rise of the Incas, the Quechua, Ayarmaca and Killke groups occupied the Chinchero area. Around 1480, the Inca Túpac Yupanqui, Pachacutec’s son, developed Chinchero as his personal residence, ordering the construction of a palace, shrines, temples, baths, and platforms. Chinchero was then deliberately burned down in 1536 by Manco Inca as he fled to Vilcabamba to prevent Spaniards from getting supplies. The Spanish still built a colonial church and other structures in the town on Inca foundations. However, neither of these conquering civilizations was able to take away Chinchero’s ancestral traditions or distinctive lifestyle and it remains a center for Quechua culture.

We arrive at a small compound about 10:30 am and are warmly greeted by Bellia, Damiana and Nudia who place a Cantua flower necklace around my neck. I use the lovely restroom before they start to dress me in their traditional clothing. I am given a skirt, jacket and hat. It takes a bit of contorting since I’m not as petite as most. The black skirt represents Pachamama and the red embroidered jacket represents strength and blood. Bellia, Damiana and Nudia are also wearing white shirts with blue embroidery which represent purity. Then a traditional woven blanket is strapped around my shoulders and secured with a large pin in the front. My personal items are added to my ‘backpack’ and we all start the walk towards Laguna de Huaypo about 11 am.

They manage to haul a table, chairs, all the food in stoneware, dishes, beverages and a young child in their traditional carrying pouches to the lakes edge. I didn’t expect all of this and thought I was just coming to learn about weaving. Ronnie, Luna and I sit at the table and are served the most scrumptious potato soup for the first course.

The next course includes fried guinea pig, steamed potatoes, quinoa, fried corn cakes. I know that guinea pig is a traditional Peruvian delicacy so I reluctantly try it. Guinea pig or cuy chactado has been consumed since pre-Incan times but I grew up having guinea pigs as pets along with my rabbits. All the food is amazing! I think I could move to Peru and eat potatoes, quinoa and corn forever! It’s tragic that we can’t have Peruvian potatoes and corn in the States! Bless the indigenous peoples of Southern Peru in the Andes Mountains who first domesticated wild, poisonous tubers over 7,000 years ago!

There is tea to drink but I sip on the water I brought with me. For dessert we have a shot of a hard clear alcohol. I don’t remember the name of it but it might be cañazo, a sugarcane spirit. There is a unique energy, smile and connection I feel with Nudia and I take advantage of the opportunity to get a selfie with her.

The rigid hats that we are wearing are quite heavy and when I investigate, I find a beautiful pattern on the top. The traditional hat, or montera, whose design is specific to Chinchero, represents the community identity. The white stripes represent pathways or stone steps (like the Inca Trail). The rainbow-like bands represent the k’uychi or rainbow, which is a symbol of Divine Protection. The triangles often represent mountains or Apus. And the red and green represent the vibrant landscape. I’m sure there’s much more to know about the intricacies of the hat but I forgot to get a tutorial when there in person.

We spend about an hour at the lake’s edge before loading up and heading back. We pass sheep hanging out on the fútbol field and alpaca lounging in yards.

Back at the compound, I admire all the flowers as they prepare to show me about the weaving process from start to finish. Daisies, geraniums, Salvia, Cantua and more!

Obviously, the first step is that the sheep or alpaca wool must be harvested. Then comes the cleaning and spinning. They clean the wool by hand using a soap made from yucca root. They spin the wool using a drop spindle called a pushqa. Bellia, Damiana and Nudia all have big smiles on their faces about how they spin while doing all sorts of other tasks. Spin while cooking. Spin while caring for children. Spin while walking to town. Always spinning! And proud of it!

Damiana explains (in Spanish) about the different plants that they harvest to make their dyes. And then she shows me a piece of prickly pear cactus with the white fuzzy cochineal insect attached. She shaves off some of the insect onto the grinding stone and smashes it with another rock. You can see the purplish-red color already appearing on the stone. Bellia brings over a small pot with water that has been warming on their earthen stove. Damiana adds the ground cochineal to the pot of steaming water and stirs. Then she dips clean wool into the pot and it immediately becomes an incredibly deep purple (see below!). They show me more examples of how adding citrus or salt will change and finish the colors. Purple, red, black, orange, light yellow. They are true traditional chemists!

Key Natural Dye Plants and Materials in Chinchero:
copied from google search

Red & Purples:
- Cochineal (Cochinilla): A parasite collected from the prickly pear (tuna) cactus, creating a wide range of reds, pinks, and purples.
- Yanali: Bark used for red and orange shades.
Yellows & Oranges:
- Q’olle (Colli/Qolle): An Andean flower used for bright yellow.
- Molle: Leaves/berries from this tree produce yellow tones.
- Kichu: Another source for yellow dye.
- Chapi: A plant used for orange tones.
Greens & Blues:
- Chilca (Chilq’ua): A weedy bush that provides various shades of green, intensified with minerals.
- Quinsa K’ucho: Leaves used to produce blue shades.
- Indigo: Used traditionally for blue hues.
Browns & Black:
- Walnut (Nogal): Used for brown, beige, and black tones.
- Mushrooms/Lichens (Qaqa Sunkha): Used for oranges and earthy tones.
Modifiers & Fixatives:
- Saqta/Saka: A root used as a natural detergent to wash the wool.
- Lemon Juice: Used to turn red dye into orange.
- Colpa (Minerals): Minerals and sulfur (often from Maras) are used to fix colors and deepen greens.

Above: Zoom in to check out the earthen stove, pots, grinding stone, different plants, citrus, unspun and hanging dyed wool.

Then Nudia ties herself into the backstrap loom, the oldest form of loom in the world, which is affixed to a large pole. Nudia secures the warp bar to her waist and uses her body weight to lean back and apply just the right tension. She inserts the batten (with the pointed ends) which is used to tighten the threads and then expertly fingers through the individual threads to create the desired pattern. It seems impossible to know which thread goes next in the sequence but they have been doing this weaving since they were young girls. Once completing a full pass across the loom, Nudia uses a small, sharply-pointed bone tool and runs it left to right across the threads. This bone is called a beater or r’uki, and serves to further tighten the threads making the weave more dense. The multi-month process of making a blanket or manta, produces a two-sided textile which is created solely from memory and without any written plans.

Quechua originally was an oral language and weaving was a way of expressing thoughts and feelings about the world. It is a very important and symbolic process to make your first blanket as a child. One must complete all the steps on their own – cleaning and spinning wool, harvesting plants, dyeing and weaving. This group of women share in the process of the weaving and no one person makes a single blanket.

More about the backstrap weaving process:
Backstrap Weaving In Peru

After the weaving demonstration they show me into a room where they have woven items for sale. My main goal is to purchase a blanket or manta but they have many things, and I wish I could buy them all. Blankets, purses, placemats, pouches and more! They have three or four blankets for sale and it’s hard to choose. I had thought that I would get a blanket made out of alpaca but the one I like the most is made from sheep’s wool. The blankets or mantas are $300 USD but I’m five dollars short (because I gave the driver from Ausangate a $5 tip). Luckily, $295 is enough. With soles, I also buy a hand-stitched hanging decoration with small balls of yarn and the Cantua flower and an etched gourd. I don’t know what today’s excursion should cost but I donate as much as I can while leaving enough to give Ronnie for arranging everything and driving. Before I take off the traditional clothing I’ve been honored to wear, we get a group photo. As I prepare to leave, they bring out some woven bracelets and ask me to choose one. I narrow it down to two that I like the most and then I ask Nudia to choose. She selects one and helps put it on my wrist.

They wave goodbye as we depart about 2 pm. We haven’t gotten very far from Chinchero when Luna falls asleep so Ronnie pulls over and makes a pillow to hold up her head.

Here’s the piece of Chinchero weaving art that I was able to bring home with me. It was made as two separate pieces and then hand stitched together – that’s the zigzag stitch down the middle. The different designs represent things that are central to their culture like the Inca Trail, puma, weaving tools, mountains, rivers and plants. The four-color luraypo pattern (main motif) is displayed prominently as the center of design sections. The white cross with the yellow center represents the four cardinal points with Cusco as the center of the world. The white circles represent the puma’s eyes. The red circles/diamonds represent the two lagoons in Chinchero and the red points of the diamond represent the mountains. The black symbol is the representation of an agricultural tool. Moving outwards is the red and green Inca Trail. The other patterns may represent meandering rivers, puma footprints, flowers, plants that grow on rocks, stars and the reflection of light in water. In Chinchero, textiles are often finished with a tubular edging called ñawi awapa, meaning “eye border” in Quechua. The cord is patterned with woven eyes which watch over the fabric protecting it spiritually, and guard it from physical wear. Chinchero’s textiles are globally recognized for their quality and authenticity. These mantas carry the legacy of a tradition that has endured for centuries.

We wind our way back to Cusco and Ronnie drops me off at Muru Homely Hotel. He confirms that he’ll give me a ride to the airport tomorrow evening and we set a pickup time for my 935 pm flight. I head back to my room and start sorting and packing as a beautiful sunset paints across Cusco. Oatmeal dinner and asleep by 10 pm.