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These indigenous weavers are sustaining a 3,000+ year old tradition of spinning and weaving with natural, native cottons and natural, native dyes including purple dye tixinda milked from the nearly extinct purpura pansa mollusk, carmine red dye derived from crushed cochineal, scale insects which grow on nopal cactus, and blues and blacks of anil, a native indigo plant.
Both natural white cotton and the rare, brown coyuchi cotton are grown in Oaxaca and are spun into thread and painstakingly woven on back-strap looms by the women of Tixinda. It takes about two weeks of preparation and spinning to produce 1 kilo of cotton thread, and approximately 3 months to weave a traditional huipil using 4 kilos of thread.
These exquisite, handwoven textiles are available by special order from Tixinda.
The men of Pinotepa de Don Luis strive to preserve a pre-hispanic practice of dyeing hand spun cotton with the purple dye tixinda milked from the purpura pansa mollusk. Poaching has nearly decimated these snails which live in the bays of Costa Chica.
In addition to tixinda, the weavers also use cochineal, a red dye derived from thousands of crushed scale insects and blue dye from the native indigo plant, to dye their cotton yarns.
Mexican Dreamweavers is a reverse migration project of La Abogada del Pueblo.
