Argentina – Women Spinners “at the End of the World” Reclaim Traditional Wool Spinning & Dyeing
Author: WUNRN
Date: May 7, 2018
By Heather Brady – Photographs by Luján Agusti
April 30, 2018 – At the southernmost tip of South America, a group of women are working together to keep alive their cultural tradition of spinning and weaving wool for clothing. These women call themselves hilanderas del fin de mundo, or “spinners at the end of the world,” and they spin, stain, and weave local sheep’s wool in Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego region, where the process has been passed down through generations of families.
Rosa Ayanquituy works the wool through her hands as she spins it into shape.
The women are mostly between 40 and 80 years old, though some of their younger siblings have shown an interest in learning and participated in the process. In many cases, the women learned techniques for spinning and weaving sheep’s wool when they were young, making their own clothing when they were girls.
Their hands weave garments that reflect the colors of their surroundings, which can be harsh and unpredictable. They use white to represent snow and red, orange, yellow, and green to represent autumn.
“Each piece of clothing and object we make carries with it a story that refers to the place where it was made—its landscape, its nature, the warmth with which the hands of these women spin and weave despite the inclement weather in the end of the world,” says Norma Enriquez, the leader of the hilanderas community. “Each garment carries with it the immensity of Tierra del Fuego, a big respect for nature and for our own history.”
The dyes for the wool are made from leaves, flowers, fruits, barks, and roots the women collect, taking care to protect nature as much as they can and use their knowledge of native plants to gather the best local materials possible. The materials are then boiled and mixed to make vividly colored dyes, and the women use their time-tested process of soaking the wool in the boiling dye to achieve the colors they want. The wool, which is washed and spun before it’s dyed, is then rolled up and left to dry before the hilanderas will begin weaving with it.
The women have been industrious in selling their clothing and wool at local markets, receiving support from INTA Ushuaia (Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria) members who provide logistical and technical support, training, and education about the diverse qualities of sheep’s wool. In addition, the project was founded with support from the Tierra del Fuego government.
Enriquez says it was hard at first to insert the group’s products into the life of the community in the region, but after working at fairs, using radio and television to advertise, and making two short films about the group’s beginning, their reputation became more widely known and they’ve experienced more success.
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