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5.2 Case Study—Reviving an Ancient Art
Must include a title and reference page. Also must have one or more paragraphs for each answer and an overall conclusion at the end.
Nilda Callañaupa grew up in the Chinchero, a small, rural, and impoverished community nestled high in the Andes of Peru between the famous ruins of Machu Picchu and the bustling trade center of Cusco. As a young child, Nilda, a descendant of the Inca and a member of Peru’s indigenous Quechua people, shepherded her family’s sheep in the highlands near her home, befriending an older shepherdess, Doña Sebastiana. As the two watched over their flocks, Doña, who was an expert spinner and weaver, taught young Nilda the ancient art of her ancestors. Learning to spin yarn at 5 years old and to weave patterns when she was 6, Nilda quickly became an expert weaver, creating beautiful handiworks in the ancient traditions of her people (Wyland, 2019).
The Inca had a rich tradition of textiles, establishing textiles centers throughout their vast empire. Known for their beautiful, brightly colored intricate detail, these textiles often denoted wealth and status in the community and were an integral part of the Inca’s social, political, and religious life. The adult female weavers of the Chinchero gathered often to weave and spin together, sharing techniques and ideas. Many, like Nilda’s grandmother, sold their textiles where they could to supplement their families’ meager farm incomes. In the early 1970s, a small group of these women had become concerned that the young people of their communities were disinterested in the weaving traditions of their people. The elder female weavers realized that if they didn’t do something to preserve this native knowledge, an important part of their culture would be lost forever.
Recognizing the importance of passing on these ancient traditions and reclaiming the disappearing textile patterns of their culture, a small group formed a weaving collective where the women gathered to study and learn the traditional ways of spinning, weaving, and natural dyeing, reviving the techniques of using handspun yarn and natural fibers from the animals they raised (sheep, alpaca, and llama). The collective hoped to market the women’s creations to the growing tourism industry in Peru, helping support the weavers and provide them with an independent income.
Coming of age in this environment sparked a passion in Nilda, and she sought to glean as much about spinning and weaving as she could from her own mother, her grandmothers, and other Chinchero elders. Though still a girl, she became a leader in the collective, which met in the courtyard of her family’s home. When a young couple from the United States moved to her village in the early 1970s, she befriended them, becoming their weaving teacher. This couple, an anthropologist and an ethnobotanist, learned the importance of weaving to the Quechua people and assisted the weaving collective and the young Nilda in securing support to create a community cultural center focused on the spinning and weaving tradition in Chinchero.
Nilda was considered a prodigy; by the time she was 14, she had traveled far from her small Peruvian village, giving weaving demonstrations at the Smithsonian Institution and at the American Museum of Natural History in the United States. She was one of the few girls in Chinchero to attend high school and later the first woman of her community to attend university, weaving to help pay for her education. She earned a master’s degree from the National University of San Antonio Abad in Cusco in 1986 and subsequently obtained a grant to study historical textiles in Berkeley, California. Nilda traveled the world teaching, demonstrating, and promoting her art and the products of her community.
Through the 1980s and ’90s, Nilda traveled abroad, increasing global awareness of the rich weaving traditions of her culture by leading workshops and lecturing to groups and at institutions including Harvard, Cornell, the University of Vermont, Brown University, and the Smithsonian Institution.
During Nilda’s absence, the cultural center she helped to found in Chinchero began to falter. In an effort to preserve it, Nilda led the weavers in forming the Centro de Textiles Tradicionales del Cusco (CTTC) in 1996, a nonprofit dedicated to assisting the communities from the Cusco region to “revive textile traditions and empower weavers, especially women” (CTTC, 2019). Through the many contacts Nilda had made in her travels, she was able to secure significant international and foundational support for this organization and worked with the weavers to revise their goals and set a path forward.
Under Nilda’s leadership, the CTTC began its work by partnering with several communities, working first with the elders to educate the weavers in their communities on weaving designs, techniques, and knowledge. CTTC built weaving centers in each community to provide a place where weavers could gather to work, “free from the distractions of home life and sheltered from the rain” (CTTC, 2019). The CTTC now partners with 10 weaving communities in the Cusco region. Each community’s weavers work to revive historical unique ancestral designs and traditions, recovering ancient techniques and refining processes for natural dyes. In order to more effectively market the weavers’ increasingly exceptional products, the CTTC opened a store, an office, and a museum in the heart of the city of Cusco, the former capital city of the Inca Empire and the tourism center of the region.
“The work of the Center is not just to preserve and to study Peruvian textiles, their symbolism and significance, etc. Our goal also is to assist families to create a larger market for their textiles and a new economy for their communities,” Nilda says (Van Buskirk & Van Buskirk, 2012b). The CTTC’s emphasis on quality and ancient traditions has done just that. The resulting finely crafted and unique products of the CTTC members are recognized worldwide and highly valued for their superior workmanship (Van Buskirk & Van Buskirk, 2012b).
Nilda’s efforts have not only helped to revive an important cultural art form of the indigenous people of Peru, but also provided the weavers and the families with a much-needed source of income in the process. Weaving was long considered “women’s work” and not highly valued, leaving women economically disadvantaged and reliant on male family members and the meager earnings of agricultural life in the region. Many of these women are now the primary breadwinners for their families. Empowered and proud, they hold important status in their communities and families.
“Through the sale of their textiles at a fair price, many of the weavers and their families have been able to greatly improve their quality of life. They are able to invest their new income in their children and land. More children are able to complete high school, and now many young people are even going to university or institutes in the city of Cusco. Families can access better health services and improve their homes or even buy more land,” says Nilda (Hallum, 2018).
The weavers have also attained a newfound pride in their traditions, their textiles, and themselves. After centuries of not wearing their traditional clothing, today, the CTTC weavers are proud to use their traditional clothing and their work to recover their traditions and the influence they have had on others (Hallum, 2018).
Nilda, now married with two children, is an award-winning author of three books and continues to travel the world not only sharing the beautiful work, traditions, and techniques of CTTC weavers but also educating other international communities on how to re-create the success she spearheaded for her own community high in the Andes.
“I guess you never know what is in your future, especially if you come from a small place,” she says. “But it is relationships that make a difference. It doesn’t matter what languages we speak, the level of education we have, the society in which we grew up, or the part of the world in which we live. We can do surprising things if we share with each other” (Van Buskirk & Van Buskirk, 2012a).
Questions
Based on the Model of Primary Leadership Skills (Figure 5.1), how would you describe Nilda’s skills?
Which skills do you feel contributed most strongly to Nilda’s success leading the CTTC?
In what ways do you think Nilda exhibited emotional intelligence?
What is your biggest takeaway from this story? What do you find most inspiring?