The Wayuus: A Colorful Outlook at Globalization!

The Wayuus: a colorful outlook at globalization!

The Wayuus see no borders: their territory is Colombia and Venezuela; their nationality, Wayuu. La Guajira is a place of salt, coal, oil and gas where weaving rules daily life in oral history written in geometric designs that speak of an exuberant space and a very old society that struggles to survive thanks to a powerful matriarchal tradition. For the Wayuus loosing their weaving tradition is losing their culture.  To be a Wayuu woman is to know how to weave.

The Wayuus know the difference between the new and the traditional, and the constant underlying power of nature.  This strong identity, inherited from centuries of resisting Spanish colonization, may be their greatest asset as they design their own cultural survival in the face of globalization.  Today, many young girls still dream of going to the cities while others are seeing a future in the work of their hands. They make the the beautiful mochila bags  which  have the indigenous circular cosmology with  no before or after, just circular threads woven into each other in cycles. Mochilas are intimately linked to Wayuu life.  They are used in daily life for transportation, traveling, carrying the chinchorros, water, food….Mochilas are woven in crotchet a technique introduced by the missionaries at the beginning of last century. Each mochila is made by a woman who takes one month making it while she takes care of the animals, gathers water, cooks and walks long distances from one community to the next always searching for water, the highest good.

A desert society, the Wayuu’s greatest treasure is water from La Rachería River in Colombia and El Limón River in Venezuela along with artificial ponds filled during the Juyapu or rainy season from September to December and the Iwas from April to May.  The Wayuus move with the seasons: during the dry season they cross the border to Venezuela and many work and trade in Maracaibo: with the rains, they return to the Colombian side.

The Wayuu are Amerindian groups part of the Maipurean linguistic family. They live in 10 reservations or Rancherias. In Colombia there approximately 200,00 Wayuus and in Venezuela, 300,000, the largest indigenous population in the country. They society is divided among matriarchal clans that speak Wayuunaiki, their native language.  Women rule in Wayuu society and girls are trained on all aspects of womanhood since they are born.  When they start menstruating, the women of the tribe enter a period of seclusion where the girl gets her head shaved, eats a vegetarian diet called Jaguapi and is bathed and taught by the elders about sewing, lovemaking, motherhood and many secrets that keep this society together. In Wayuu society women rule and this is expressed in the many colors and shapes of their weaving which trace their steps in the vast desert. Thus, a mochila is not only a container but a bearer of identity, a sign of life where life is very hard.

Women rule this society: they cure, they talk to the spirits through dreams, they call the rain and erase evil spirits…their lives are printed in their weavings. Women rule and live around weaving in a literal and a metaphorical sense: they are the thread that unites families and clans; they weave words into sentences that narrate ancestral dreams, legends and myths. Weaving is their white canvas where they write their ways, daily life, and the immense space of the desert they inhabit. While women rule; men run after the cattle and their other women. Women are healers or Piache, they talk to the spirits through dreams, curing illness, attracting the rains, eliminating bad spirits, leaving their tradition for future generations. Wayuu women wear wide mantas in bright colors like turquoise, gold, pink and white…Red is their strongest color that symbolized all that is good; Yellow talks about the sun; Blue about the ocean; Orange…tranquility; white, pureness; black, sadness. They weave in looms, in crotchet or with the asonushi using their fingers and toes… Wayuu life revolves around the chinchorro where they are born, sleep, dream, eat, have sex and die… Visitors are welcomed by giving them the finest chinchorro. The dead are buried in their chinchorro and new cupples start married life with their own chinchorro.

Wayuu weaving tradition comes from Wale´kerü, the spider that taught them how to weave creating drawings… “Threads of many colors came out of their mouth…she used to weave all night and every day a new drawing spoke of their dreams”. The richness of this tradition is kept in the kanaspi, a mythical tree from the region around which threads are woven and memory kept. Kanaas is a pre-Columbian technique of weaving with a double sided positive and negative effect. This technique is used for the finest pieces like the funeral cloth. Usually, Wayuu weaving is geometric and repetitive, each drawing with a meaning directly linked to their worldview. For example: the donkey’s vulva; the turtle’s shell, the cow`s stomach, the fish’s eye; the weaving in the roof; traces on the sand; the mosquito head or the stars that that mark the arrival of the rain. Cottons, wool, pita fiber, straw and horse hair are used for their weavings. Like colors, designs also come from the surrounding desert. . .

For the Wayuus life does not end with death. They believe in a cycle that continues through different transitions and this is why burials are one of the most important rituals that bring the community together.  The dead are buried with their belongings and after tow years, the body is incinerated and placed in ceramics at the clan’s cementery. The cycle starts again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/01/fashion/01NOTICED.html