Globalization effects on Andean Textiles

Textiles in Andean communities have always held significance. This can be seen in archaeological and historical findings that note the social and ritual importance, with iconography depicting an individual of lower status without clothes and one of higher status elaborately dressed, or textiles continuously found as grave goods (Conlee 2007). Textiles have the function of art and a medium of communication (Baitzel 2018), as seen with the iconography, but the process of creating these materials also plays an important social function in Andean culture.

The production of textiles has been an intergenerational practice and today it denotes different life stages, with children and elder women spinning the yarns used to create the cloth and women of reproductive age weaving the material (Baitzel 2018; 181). Textile production serves an important function in Andean culture, providing an opportunity for social capital and power to women and a way for this folk group to maintain their culture.

Production of the textiles has been maintained and evolved, as is standard with folk traditions. This natural evolution can be seen with the work of Greg Sarris that describes his own experience witnessing how different generations interpret and pass on aspects of their culture, with their unique perspectives contributing to the evolution and maintenance of traditions (Sarris 1993). But there are outside influences that have altered the relationship that Andean people have with textiles.

Michael Taussig explains it best in his 2010 work, that South American cultures functioned around a different economic value, the use-value. And while some communities are able to maintain this system, others are overpowered especially with the advent of globalization and tourism.

The production of textiles in the Andes has always been household-oriented and exchange-oriented, but with the rise of tourism the production has increasingly become more focused on exchange. This is seen in the rise of weaving centres that depend not only on a false narrative but also outsourced labor. The false narrative is one peddled by the centres, it frames them as saving the indigenous practice with women working as equals in the centres. It deliberately ignores the continued, natural evolution of textiles that the true weavers in the communities have and continue to maintain within their own homes. Also, the women that sell within the centres rely on the labor of the real weavers to stock their wares, commissioning the household weavers and buying from inmates in Cuzco (Garcia 2018). In order to capitalize in this field of tourism, women sell a fabricated image of the traditional practice fully divorced from the origins of this folk practice and its artisans.

This folk practice of the Andean people has become commodified and pigeonholed to fit a narrative, marketing the textiles for capital gain while ignoring the history and social importance of this craft.