time for interviews!!

Maria Cristina's mom undoing the mistakes in my nanduti...pretty embarassing huh?

















A beautiful "carpeta valle kare" or Kare Valley doilie made with fine thread














Some more nanduti I recently sent off to friends in Chile that I met over the Christmas holiday.


As you can see, there is a tendency to only make one type of design--this one is called Jasmin Flower in Itaugua and called Star in Pirayu and is becoming the standard design in nanduti despite the fact that there are more than 150 designs in print and more than 300 speculated to be in existence.





A new friend who, as you can see, weaves nanduti while working in her shoe store. A great example of using nanduti to supplement one's income and break the exploitation cycle rather than depend on on'es weaving to put food on the table.























My good friend Alba and her little brother and I on our weekend trip to Atyra--the 8th cleanest city in the world and one of the only touristy places outside of Asuncion in Paraguay. We took a great tour of the small town alongside a jovial yet presumptious tourguide that led us through a gigantic complex being built by an Italian Fransiscan priest. Look up the town on the internet if you get the chance, really interesting.



This is part of the nanduti display in the Ceramic Museum in Asuncion. I tried to get an interview with the administration and she sent me away saying that I should email her my questions...we'll see if she responds. basically i'm interested in finding out what motivates them to maintain a textile display in a ceramic and pottery museum...



















This is the road that i had to cross in order to get to the museum...a saddeningly common site when it rains in Asuncion. Regardless of the fact that it rains rather frequently in Paraguay and that when it rains it rains hard, they haven't quite caught onto the idea of using drains and tubing...














Another display in the museum showcasing hand-made and hand-baked pottery from Tobati. They also showcase stuff from Ita (just down the road from where I'm living).














This is the famous church in Yaguaron. I'm already committed to coming back to watch the dramatization of the passion and resurrection of christ during Easter Week when we'll climb from the church up to the top of a local hill in a procession behind the actors...certain to be interesting. Oh, and the restauration of the this church was made possible by the local priest in Itaugua (whom nobody likes because he's supposedly really dull, constantly angry, and otherwise overly restrictive...never met him but doesn't leave a positive impression...).















Hello all! Welcome to another adventure in the anthropological life of mine. I feel like I've packed an entire project into this past week and it's been such a blast actually advancing my project and feeling like I'm being productive and not wilting in the Paraguayan sun. I was trying to put my finger on just why I felt so renewed and refreshed this week and I realized that it had rained all last week and the weather has been incredibly nice. Kinda weird to owe my life to the weather, but that's the honest truth. It's still hot but nothing like January and February. In fact, I feel like I am "warming up" to Paraguay and the more I get out and conduct my interviews, the more established and comfortable I feel. That's not to say that I didn't get out before, as you have seen through the rest of my posts, I definitely got to meet a bunch of people, but I honestly didn't feel like myself and had a hard time even concentrating on a job at hand because I wanted to jump into a freezer and cool off. I also had a lot of long-distance interviews with current students of Syracuse University who spoke VERY highly of the school and the atmosphere, the student body and the professors, the location and the curriculum etc. It was highly motivating to have them initiate contact with me as well as other contacts that I initiated and have both types of contacts offer their personal view of the school. I feel really lucky to be accepted and am excited to move on in my schooling and move forward in the professional world!!

This past week I had a great time making new contacts and working on maintaining old ones. I finally got to go back and visit Maria Cristina and I showed her my nanduti that I had been working on. I had stopped woring on one piece because I had messed up the "armaje" or base and I knew that I had messed it up and that I would have to undo it all and start over. But I simply didn't have the patience to undo it and had left it there. As soon as I got to Maria Cristina's house, I handed over the "bastidor" or the wooden frame they make the lace on, and her mom started looked at, she shook her head and said that it was badly made and would have to be redone. I admitted that I had done it wrong but didn't have the patience, so she, without e asking, sat down and undid it all and then showed me how to fix it and told me that she would expect it to be good next time or she would punish me by stabbing my hand with the needle (this is a typical punishment for the girls that are learning to weave though I can't imagine how much it would hurt!). We chatted and I got a good interview from her about her past participation in a weaving cooperative that doesn't function anymore. In visiting her, I also got to "estrenar" or showcase my new bike and I'm so glad to have my transportation back. If you don't remember, I had a beautiful purple bike that got stolen back in January and now I finally got the landlords to pay for a replacement.

On Tuesday I interviewed a local journalist that is writing a "Folklore magazine" and also writes a bunch of poetry in guarani. The people generally think he's crazy and a hippy (and physically he fits the part with a full beard and ponytail) but he was really passionate about his work and it was fascinating to argue with him about the value of changing the Guarani orthography to a standardized international phonetic script rather than the old system that tried to write Guarani using Spanish phonemes. He's adamant that the government is run by groups of friends and nepetists (which I would have to agree with) and that they are working to brainwash his children into accepting a materialistic, modernized and corrupt agenda that disrespects the great leaders of the past and the national Paraguayan identity (which I would have to consider more to make an informed opinion.). We chatted for about 5 hours during which we had lunch and talked about Mormonism and the fallacies of institutionalizing religion. He asked me to write an article for his magazine on my view of Itaugua's social and cultural atmosphere which I took over to him on Friday. I don't know if he's really going to print it, but I'll let you know. Interesting encounter.

I then went to interview the founder and owner of one of the largest artesanry shops here in Itaugua. She actually knows how to weave (unlike most owners) and started her shop more than 35 years ago. As we started talking about the future of nanduti, she lamented the current condition of the youth and their general disinterest in working for their pay, in learnig moral conduct, and in taking care of their elders. She said they want to experiment, try new things, and end up getting into trouble because they don't know the severity or the consequences of the choices they make. They are too independent, too lazy, and too curious for their own good. She was very observant and very expressive and I have to admit I identified a lot with her complaints. It's been hard to be a young, single adult here when the only real outlet for meeting people my age are discotecas and soccer games (both of which invlove heavy drinking, smoking, and crowds of horny sex-driven Paraguayans). There are church activities which don't invlove the drinking and smoking and is a lot more calm on the sex-drive, but also full of social fanatics that live for the church and don't have anything to talk about besides marriage and the next church activity. To be honest, it's just like Provo within the single young adults...quite disparaging. That was just Monday...!

I did a bunch of interviews in Asuncion on Thursday...going to a local printing company that has started a line of notebooks with nanduti designs on the covers. They are a lot more expensive than the other typical school notebooks but basically the same price as other notebooks from this particular company. It's run by a Korean family and I was more than disappointed that when I arrived, the boss that had agreed to interview with me had left and they simply instructed me to talk with another supervisor that didn't have much to say other than they liked the design...

I then talked with vendors in Asuncion and experienced, again, the closed world of the nanduti trade. When I talk to the weavers themselves, they are incredibly open, honest, friendly, interested, inquisitive, and playful. Talking with the sellers I get the distinct impression that they don't trust me. They must think that I am going to steal their busy, uncover the fact that they really are exploiting the weavers in order to make more money, or that they are simply wasting their time talking to me. If I'm not there to buy, I must be there with an ulterior motive.

I finally got to the famous Museo del Barro--an anthropological museum showcasing ceramic artesanry from all parts of Paraguay. They had beautiful displays and modern showcasing of thousands of pieces of pottery and statuary, as well as religious imagery and thousands of little Catholic Saints and crucifixes, and my motive for going: a nanduti room.

The nanduti they had didn't have any special labels so I had no idea where they had gotten it from or how old it was, but they had some beautiful pieces, all in white, on display in between sheets of glass. On the walls they had displays of "images of Itaugua" that a photographer had donated. I realized that in living in this small town nicknamed the "cradle of nanduti" that I've grown to take things for granted just like the natives do whereas the "outsiders" see everything as new and exciting. The photos highlighted the weavers among other artesans, the colonial columns of downtown Itaugua, and the rustic atmosphere of a growing town.

I then worked with Chiquita and Maria Angela updating our progress on the book publication. I hadn't had much of a chance to work on their materials but we are moving steadily forward and I'm really excited to have something more concrete under our belt :)

On Saturday, I went to Yaguaron, a town about 30 km from Itaugua down another highway heading South towards Argentina. It is famous for its Catholic Church which was honestly impressive. I had worked out with a good friend Rommy to head out with the task of capturing more real-life objects that had inspired nanduti designs. It's been a real uphill battle looking for these objects because, despite the fact that they are native to the scenery and environment of Paraguay, it's not very easy to show up and take a picture of a fox or a crab...most of the plants I have been able to find but not all of them are in season so I haven't gotten all the flowers that I am seeking either. I'm not sure how to make up for that, but we'll see how it works out.

Anyway, we visited the church, drove around the sleepy town and visited a small museum that was one of the homes of Paraguay's self-declared "perpetual dictator" Dr. Francia. Back in the 1800's, he ushered in the "golden age" of Paraguay by closing the country off and forcing the fledgling country to be completely self-reliant. People had to make their own food, clothing, transportation etc. and importation was completely shut down. It is in this period of time that Paraguayan artisanry really took off and probably when nanduti became more localized, more inspired by the local scenery and environment, and more sustainable as an artform.

We went to various places including a nursery to look for plants and the side of the road to look for other plants, and in all it was a fruitful trip. I also found a local lady that does waxing and got a full leg wax that I haven't had the privelege of receiving in almost a year. It hurt like a mother and I wasn't all that satisfied with her methodology, but finding a wax in Itaugua Paraguay was a pleasing discovery.

Today I just got back from another golden interview with a weaver that works in "hilo fino" or fine thread rather than "hilo grueso" or thick thread. Traditionally, nanduti was all done with a very fine, sewing thread that would take hours and days to produce a small piece of lace. Nowadays they use a lot thicker thread that is easier to see, easier to use, and easier to make larger designs with. It's a lot cheaper too because it doesn't take as much time, but you make more money per hour making it with thick thread because the buyers don't like paying a large sum of money, and the fine thread stuff is harder to sell. She was incredibly open and talkative and unabashed in telling me of the exploitative nature of the paraguayan marketplace and Paraguayan society. People just don't value hand-made things anymore, she said. The government doesn't help, and the one government institution that is supposedly there to help out is completely corrupt and worse than the regular intermediaries.

I love getting into conversations like these with the weavers because I feel like, if nothing else, I provide a bit of emotional release for them and an understanding ear to help them express their complaints. most people that come through Paraguay (which these days aren't many...) only get to see the pretty side of nanduti--the history and the native legend, the colorful displays in the artisan shops, and the nostalgic representations of the old national nanduti fesivals. They rarely come into contact with an actual weaver, a mother working in her home and trying to keep her family going by the skill of her hand, desperate to break free from the cycle of poverty that surrounds her.

So, if anyone is planning a trip to South America, I cordially invite you to come to Paraguay--preferably March through September when the weather is beautiful and mild--and get to know some real-life artisans and the hands behind the tourist trinkets.

I hope all is going well and that you are all enjoying the oncoming Spring. Sorry to not be as up-to-date with my blog and I hope you enjoyed this week's anthropological ramble. Until the next one, take care,

Kristine