Ccaccaccollo village’s weaving market is perched on an emerald-green Andean mountainside, looking out across Peru’s Sacred Valley. Inside a straw-roofed hut, two women sit at wooden looms working the foot treadles, transforming the frames into thrusting locomotives. Pumpkin-orange and white fibres intertwine as the shafts shift up and down – clack-clack, clack-clack, clack-clack.
Next door, bowls bursting with black corn, eucalyptus leaves and pearl white beans line the terracotta shelves. A woman plunges a ball of alpaca fibres into a pot of steaming dye and pulls out the mesh; it drips crimson like the head of a decapitated warrior.
The 60 Quechua women running this market in Ccaccaccollo, 15 miles north-east of Cusco and about 80 east of Macchu Picchu, source Andean materials to dye clothes, from qolle, a shrunken cauliflower-looking plant, to cochinillas, which are small insects that burrow into cacti.
“Not long ago this was a sad place. We lost our way of life,” Francisca Qquerar Mayta, a spokesperson for the women, tells me. Sacred Inca traditions, which survived the mid-16th century Spanish conquest, disappeared from Ccaccaccollo in the 1990s after a tourism boom caused an economic imbalance in the Sacred Valley.
Most significant was the increase in visitor numbers to Machu Picchu, which surged from about 95,000 a year (including locals) in 1992 to 1.1 million in 2014. Profits rose, too, transforming the region’s capital Cusco into a tourist hub with swanky hotels and expensive restaurants. And while communities close to sacred Inca ruins, like Pisac and Ollantaytambo, also thrived, others were forgotten. Fears over discrimination saw children forced to abandon their indigenous roots, including their native tongue Quechua. Many relocated to tourist locations to become street sellers, or to beg for money.
Most of the women left the market as young girls, pedalling trinkets in Cusco and living “with no electricity, water, very little food. In rooms no bigger than that,” says Francisca, pointing to a stable housing two tethered alpacas.
Spotting the inequity, in 2005 Planeterra – the non-profit foundation of the Canada-based travel company G Adventures – launched the Women’s Weaving Co-op in Ccaccaccollo. Local women relearned weaving techniques and, with the guidance of the foundation’s experts, started selling handmade alpaca clothing.
But in 2010, three days of torrential rain across the Sacred Valley almost completely destroyed Ccaccaccollo. Mudslides dragged most of the houses down the mountain, leaving surviving homes spewing water from their front doors like burst dams. Looms and other equipment were washed away; the workshop was destroyed.
Thanks to Planeterra’s fundraising and financing from the municipality, locals have rebuilt the village including a factory, central plaza and homes for the 170 families. The market, lined with rows of brightly coloured clothing, welcomes trekkers and the co-op received its first export order last year. Perhaps more importantly, though, the women continue to preserve their unique way of life for future generations.
• Simon Willis’s trip was provided by to gadventures.co.uk, Planeterra.org
