Textil Art work Fiber

The Wichí community - Chaguar natural fiber

The chaguar is a group of herbaceous plants with succulent and thorny leaves that inhabits semi-arid areas of the Gran Chaco ecoregion, northeastern Argentina.

For the Wichi, the chaguar is a symbol and attaches great importance to its collection, processing, spinning, dyeing and weaving, which are usually associated with the women of the community.

 

The chaguar is culturally important to the Wichí people. The myth "The advent of women" states that the first women descended from the sky to the world of men through braided ropes of chaguar. The plant has a prominent symbolic role in the female initiation rite, in which women begin to spin and weave from adolescence.

Currently, chaguar represents a source of economic income for the communities through the sale of handmade products, which in turn allows them to perpetuate cultural transmission and the maintenance of ancestral knowledge.

This is a way of recovering the knowledge of the women of the Wichí people and adding value to the forest products. The drawings developed in the weavings have different meanings in themselves, inspired by the local flora and fauna and identifying the family clans.