In what is called the highest coastal mountain region in the world, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, women of the indigenous Arhuaco community are known for knitting small, colorful, ancestral bags made of lamb’s wool or cotton that celebrate the origin of the world.
“The bags have the meaning of the womb and they are a symbol of fertility,” says Tatiana Calixto, lecturer in Spanish in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, LSA. Calixto also is a photographer who assembled the photo exhibit Zarwatun’s Bridge, presented through Oct. 30 in the Michigan Union. It presents 14 prints, some taken by Calixto and others by Zarwatun Villafane, age 7.
Calixto says that while the bags are popular throughout Columbia, “On my first visit to the community last year, it occurred to me that even in Colombia the lack of knowledge about this community is huge.”
She returned this year to Columbia and the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, to learn more of the indigenous people. “They believe in the harmony of the earth, and the harmony of the land,” Calixto says. “If you exploit the land, if you cut into it, you are cutting mother earth. They constantly pray for the world’s harmony and equilibrium.”
The Arhuaco believe their land is the heart of the world, created by the great mother. “She was spinning and she dropped her spindle, and as she pulled it up the Sierra Nevada was created,” Calixto says, according to their beliefs.
The objective of the project, sponsored by the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching and the International Institute, is to break the idea of the “Hispanic world” being all Hispanic, by celebrating the indigenous Arhuaco community.
