Weaving hope

The Wayuu people have inhabited this territory since before the cacti sprouted roots and the first goat gave birth, under the immensity of the stars. Here, Wayuu men and women have settled and have given meaning to the difficult territory, transforming the aridity of the desert for fertility in the thought that translates into weaving: colourful, intricate and symbolic.
Resilience, mysticism, ancestral techniques and motivation allow Domingo Gonzales to keep his memory and that of his ancestors alive.
In the Maku Ranch, people live by weaving. Whoever inhabits this territory is inevitably connected to this trade, in which both men and women gather around threads and looms; This is how colours and patterns make sense.

It is in this place where Domingo González, accompanied by his family, without saying much, tells the essential thing: about his flat knitting and brocade, his daughters and his illness.

He has worked the yarn since he was little. Already in old age, with pride and impetus he weaves the brocade with his wife every day. Thus, in office, he hands over his legacy to his daughters. As he ties the threads, he also ties the past and the future: in this weaving he lives the word of his ancestors.

Domingo’s kidney disease prevents him from using the horizontal loom, as it requires constant standing, and his joints end up aching. Therefore, he built a vertical loom, low, around which he patiently sits with a smile drawn on his face.

He has overcome the difficulties that his body has imposed on him to continue weaving with his family, just as his community dodges the obstacles of the environment to continue building a story of life and hope.

Domingo and his family are beneficiaries of the Pepsico Naatu Social Cause, which in collaboration with the ACDI/VOCA LA Foundation, has allowed a new sense of belonging and appropriation of their traditions to flourish in this community through threads and looms.

Thanks to this project, the members of the community have achieved a new conjunction. They return to their traditions, while innovating and creating a better future, with the hope that through joint work with the professionals and designers that accompany them, they can turn their weaving into the main livelihood of their families and show the world the richness of their ancestral heritage.

The disease has not been able to prevent Domingo from being more and more alive and his story of the ties that unite him with the territory, his family and with himself increasingly stronger.

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