Why I set up a Shop Selling Wayuu Mochila Bags!
I have visited the region of La Guajira in Colombia more times than I can remember. During these many visits, I have fallen in love with the place and its people. So, I thought that it was about time that I write something about the experiences I have had there. I first visited Riohacha (the capital of the region) from the first time in the 2000s almost 26 years ago. At that time, the tourist infrastructure was not particularly well developed. There were only a few hotels geared towards tourism and the beach and the Malecon (the main road that looks onto the beach) did not offer many facilities for visitors. However, its relative obscurity in terms of tourism was and still is part of its charm. I still remember my first night there, walking through the old town, which spans from the Malecon to what is known as the Séptima. The decadent charm of the Caribbean architecture, derived mainly from the Spanish colonial era, enveloped me as I explored the Plaza Padilla, Ferdman Park and the narrow streets behind these landmarks. Here I came across families on the pavement, laughing and eating or simply enjoying the cool night breeze. Inside their houses, I caught glimpses of a simple but evocative décor (mahogany tables and chairs, images of Christ, red or white tiled floors) all lit by low burning lamps. The whole place, it seemed to me, exuded a blend of laid-back content, and modest comfort. The people sat on the streets greeted me with wide, authentic smiles or a warm ‘buenas noches amigo!’ (‘good evening, friend’). That night I also found a wonderfully rustic restaurant that looked onto the beach. It had a palm-leaf roof and wooden beams and floors, and orange-hued lamps that swung gently in the breeze. In this amber light, the families and couples dining at the tables reminded me of the warm colours of a Botero painting. I ate a traditional fish stew with rice and paticones (flattened and fried plantain), accompanied by a costeña (a typical beer from the coast), and enjoyed the anticipation of new adventures and experiences…
The streets of Riohacha by night:
Since that first night, I have indeed experienced many new things and exciting adventures in La Guajira. I have attended a traditional Caribbean carnival, with its wonderful colours, vibrant music and traditional train of dancers and carousels. I have witnessed a Caribbean funeral with its shifts from upbeat to mournful rhythms, colourful and sombre outfits and respectful and celebratory tones. I have attended literary events and seen plays put on by the locals that narrate the myths and life of the region. I have been invited to friends’ houses and tried the local household dishes such as iguana in coco milk (now banned due to the endangerment of the iguana in La Guajira region).
All these experiences have enriched my life immeasurably. But, out all of them, the experiences I have had with the indigenous peoples of the region have been the most enriching and rewarding. When I first came to La Guajira I was not overly aware of the Wayuu peoples. I had arrived to investigate the relationship between the Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez and his family ties in Riohacha. The world renown writer has talked on many occasions about his Riohachero grandparents’ deep influence on the development of his famously idiosyncratic narrative style. The investigation did not serve to be redundant, despite the fact I discovered many Colombian academics had investigated and published on the relationship beforehand. For I also began to find out that the grandmother of García Márquez had been brought up in the cultural environment of the Wayuu. This promising route of investigation was later confirmed in the author’s autobiography Vivir para contarla/To Live for storytelling (2002) in which he writes about his grandmother’s, Tránquilina Iguarán Cotes, knowledge of Wayunaiki, the Wayuu’s native language. Her surname, Iguarán, is also the name of a Wayuu clan, while her first name Tránquilina, is a common name for Wayuu women. This investigation opened the cultural world of the Wayuu to me as well as the many talented writers they have. They were soon to become my major professional passion…
The Wayuu are an indigenous people of the region of La Guajira in Colomba and the state of Zulia in Venezuela. They are over 350,000 of them. The majority of them still speak Wayunaiki, their native language, but many of them today are bilingual speakers of Spanish as well. While they have adopted, by choice and sometimes force, many western and Hispanic practices, they have steadfastly continued to practice Wayuu traditions and kept their language alive. These aspects are, as with all cultures, deeply influenced by the fauna, flora, and the natural environment that surrounds them. La Guajira, their territory is generally a semi-desert like habitat, in which access to water is both difficult and highly prized. Thus, water and rain are important tropes in Wayuu traditions and narratives.
My first experience of their world was a tourist trip to a ranchería on the outskirts of Riohacha. In those days, the visits were far more rustic and unprepared. Today, with the rise in popularity of ethno-tourism, many Wayuu families have learnt to incorporate the taste of the western tourist for a seamless spectacle into their ‘repertoires’. Back then, they invited me and my fellow Colombian tourist to sit in a hammock that hung from an enramada, a wooden structure of entwined branches and palm leaves. They served us a traditional plate of Wayuu food (sweated lamb and a type of arepa) with chirrinchi (a very strong alcohol derived from sugar cane). We then watched two children, after a heated argument with their parents, which was hidden from our view but not our ears, perform the traditional dance the yonna with the kind of sulky indifference that only adolescents are capable of producing. It was both fascinating and comical in equal measure…
A few years on, I would re-experience all of these things, not as a tourist, but as a friend or guest of Wayuu families. I had begun to investigate the Wayuu culture in earnest and to learn their language. I had also initiated a social impact project in Wayuu schools, in which I worked with Wayuu teachers to use Wayuu bilingual literature to help Wayuu school children learn more about Wayuu philosophy and knowledge. With the advent of each new generation this knowledge is in danger of disappearing. This project took off really well and, through it, I soon made friends in the Wayuu community. They invited me to some of the most important family and clan events.
A memory that still fills me with happiness and a real sense of real privilege is that of finally attending an authentic yonna. Although some yonna have different meanings in Wayuu culture, the dance is usually an important rite of passage for young girls into womanhood. It is celebrated after a sutapaulu ‘enclosure or cloistering’ of a young girl after her first menstruation. The girl is separated from the rest of her community and enclosed in a special place in the ranchería. Here she is cared for by her mother and aunts and taught the necessary skills to play a role in the home and Wayuu society. One of the most important skills taught to her is that of weaving. The designs that she learns (the kanas) connect in various ways to the central beliefs of Wayuu cosmovision and to the animals and landscape that shape them. If she develops a real talent for weaving these patterns into the bags, hammocks and female clothing that the Wayuu produce she will prove to be a valuable asset to her family and future in-laws, if and when she marries. The yonna’s purpose, on this particular occasion, is to present the now ‘woman’ and her newly learnt skills to Wayuu society. It is also sometimes about potential suitors, proving their worth and worthiness to be the young woman’s future husband. At the start of the ceremony, the young girl presents gifts that she has handwoven to the high ranking or important guests, usually the matriarchs representing clans or families. The girl then performs the dance with the various suitors, though some maybe her younger brothers and or cousins if needed for a full performance.
The Yonna performed by a Wayuu.
The girl, dressed in red to represent the Wayuu’s sacred relationship with blood, pursues the young males to the rhythm of the Kasha (traditional Wayuu drum) until she manages to trip them up. The male protagonist who shows the most resistance, who dances for the longest time, before being sent tumbling to the floor, is seen, at least symbolically, as the most promising suitor. The Yonna, then, is highly charged with notions of fertility and eroticism (see the interpretation of Wayuu leader and thinker Ramon Paz Ipuana for more on this). It is also, according to many, related to a central narrative in Wayuu cosmology. In this story, Juya (the god of rain and abundance) pursues his first, errant, wife Pulowui. When they are finally coupled, Pulowui then converts herself into Mma the earth. The coupling symbolises the life-giving force of rain in the Wayuu’s semi-desert environment. It produces plants for their livestock and crops for their families (Sanchez Pirela). The dance celebrates and plays out this central myth.
The Yonna, as with everything Wayuu, also enjoys a vibrant and meaningful relationship with the kanaas that the Wayuu weave into their mochilas. The vertical and horizontal lines of the abstract designs are believed to represent Juyá (motion of the rain) and Pulowui/Mma (the earth). The dance and the mochilas are interconnected in further ways still. Many of the movements performed in the dance represent the animals that live in the Wayuu’s territory. They imitate those of the stone curlew, the goat, the buzzard, as well as those of the fly and ant, among many others. The tracks or footprints of these animals feature in some of the most traditional kanas on Wayuu bags: jañuleky (fly’s head), shi'chiruyaapa'a (the bullock’s nose), pulusiwaa (the footprints of various birds) or the molonkoutaya (the shell of the turtle) etc. While some have commented on the disperse and disconnected meanings of the kanaas. They fail to take into account the system of thought and representation of the Wayuu. The Wayuu, according to eminent Wayuu thinker Rafael Segundo Mercado Epieyu, create and understand meanings in a way that mirrors the art of weaving (e’inaa) taught to the Wayuu by Waleker. They connect the threads of images and words to create larger, symbolic meanings across different interconnected mediums: dance, face painting, weaving, oral and written stories, music etc. Seen in this way the Kanas become not simply some random representation of domestic and daily aspects of the Wayuu’s life, but part of a larger more complex texture of narratives in which they assume a deeper interconnected meaning. The very name of the mochila (katso’u) is a case in point. The word broken down literary means ‘that with life/knowledge’: ‘K’ means ‘with’, ‘ata’ ‘skin’, o’u ‘eye’. The eye of the skin refers to the belly button which of course is a symbol of fertility. The bag itself is often used in oral and written stories as a symbol of the womb. Thus, the mochila or ‘katso’u’ represents the fertility of the female Wayuu but also on another level the cultural fecundity of the Wayuu. It is an archive of the cultural expression that keeps Wayuu knowledge and traditions alive.
The molonkoutaya kanas pattern and the same featured on a mochila in our collection:
Of course one does not see these connections, at least not all of them, when watching the Yonna. My attention was taken up by the feeling of anticipation of the crowd gathered to watch the dance, which informed me I was about to watch something important. I also remember being immersed in the thunderous tones of the Kasha, and mesmerised by the delicate and elegant movements of the young Wayuu as she tested her suitor’s stamina, the way her dress and shawl fluttered in the wind, radiating with the redness of the late afternoon sun. The whole performance lasted no longer than 30 minutes, but I was left with no doubt that I had just watched something special, beautifully ephemeral that would stay with me for the rest of my life…
Dr Paul McAleer
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