Mapuche Weavers

A half-day visit with Mapuche weavers in the Leleque area, along Ruta 40 east of Cholila, is a chance to watch the work at the loom and see ponchos, blankets, and rugs take shape.

The loom is the witral, an upright frame of lashed poles. The warp threads run from top to bottom; the weaver opens them with wooden rods, passes the weft through by hand, and packs each row tight with a heavy hardwood beater, the ñirewe. The yarn itself is spun by hand on a spindle, and much of it is colored with plants gathered from the land: calafate root for yellow and its berries for violet-blue, jarilla for golden yellows and olive. Sheep's wool, which arrived with the Spanish, took the place of the guanaco fiber woven in earlier centuries.

The pieces carry their own vocabulary: the makuñ, a man's poncho; the trarüwe, a woman's woven sash; the pontro, a blanket; the lama, a flat-woven rug. Patterned designs, the ñimin, are picked out thread by thread. Some motifs are widely recognized, like the lukutuwe, a figure kneeling in prayer, but their meanings vary from weaver to weaver and place to place.

Weaving has long been handed down from mothers and grandmothers, and a first finished piece traditionally marked a young woman's passage into adulthood. The craft faded through much of the twentieth century, under stigma and the arrival of cheap factory cloth, and it is valued again today, both as identity and as a livelihood.

This is a visit to working artisans, not a performance. Ask before taking photographs, expect the weavers to set their own prices, and if a piece speaks to you, buying it directly from the person who made it is the most meaningful thing you can bring home from Patagonia.