Beindindigenous
| Magazine
The Mapuche Weaving: Leonor Manquel
She is surrounded by colored wool. She is 60 years
old but works and laughs like 15 years old.
Leonor Manquel has a beautiful shining long black hair. In the ruka,
she saw her mother weaving -called witral in mapudungun-. Nowadays,
she travel around towns to teach the white and mapuche brothers
the traditional mapuche wearing technique. Moreover, she give an
important workshop of mapuche weaving and wisdom in the Museum of
the Austral University of Chile in Valdivia.
Perseverance is necessary to weave. Leonor
said that at the beginning, a small one loom is recommended to use,
because of the amount of work involved.
Color of textile is an important phase of the process. It is extract
from nature accord to indigenous techniques. The colors are hidden
inside bark, leaves, roots and sometimes in flowers whichafter have
being boiled dye the wool
Natural dying is everlasting and unique. For dying, the raw material
must be boiled for one hour at least. Then leave to soak. Strain
water, add the wool and boil for 20 minutes to fix color. Finally,
wash the wool since water will be transparent, Leonor said.
"Mordientes" are used
to avoid colors fade. Salt is the most common. However, mapuche
women used rotten urine, piedra lumbre, ash or soot that was on
ceiling in the rukas in the past.
Matico flowers give a yellow dye better than Michay which one run.
An orange dye is produced from Notro flowers. Maqui leaves mixed
with Chilco flowers give a purple dye.
A brown dye, for example, is produced from onion skin, Barba de
Palo or roots of Michay tree. A deep red dye is difficult to obtain
because of Tineo tree shortage. In spite of that, you must try out
and have your own pattern book, Leonor said.
Leonor said that according to mapuche customs,
grandmothers bring up children. Leonor was raised by her grandmother.
After her grandmother, she moved to the home of her aunt in Lanco.
There all changed. In spite of she was living in the home of her
aunt, she had to work after her grandmother died. "I grew up
working for a rich person. I was in an unknown environment. I lived
like a rich person, but I had not education, I was in the shadows".
From this time she remember physical abuses and a lot of discrimination.
"At dawn, I already was cleaning the orchard with my cousin.
I went to school barefoot. They said that I didn't have mother,
because of that I was very sad until now"
Source: http://revista.serindigena.cl/art_anteriores/marzo/entrev_leo_manquel.htm
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A
mapuche pan, a necessary accessory
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| "In
the ruka lived my mother, my father, my grandmother and I. During
the day we lived in the ruka and at night we slept in the new house.
In the afternoon, my father was singing and looking at the sun".
In her ruka there were pifilcas y trutrukas "ourselves made our
trutrukas. It was our hobby: who made the longest one with chupon
leaves. Eleonor remember sacred ceremonies like Nguillatún
". It was so nice and three days long, but I was child and understood
a little bit. In Ciruelos, when I was 10 years old I saw my last Nguillatún.
I was dancing whole day for giving thanks to the rain, harvest, etc." |
