For four thousand years, textiles have been one of the most complex and artistic expressions to develop in the region of the Andes. Clothing, and in particular woven articles of clothing, attained a level of true communicative expression through which communities depicted their identities and constructed their differences.

The characteristic features of each group’s distinctive style, besides their undeniable beauty, also possessed, in general, a feeling and a precise meaning. It is possible to say, therefore, that Andean textiles can be "read" like a text and that they speak of certain determined thoughts and a particular world vision.

This art survives with great difficulty given the current circumstances of indigenous societies. In the South-central of Bolivia, however, two groups, the Jalq'a and Tarabuco, which today speak Quechua, have been able to maintain their traditional textiles until the present day. Based on these practices that are still alive today, the Program carried out by the Foundation for Anthropological Investigation and Ethnic Development, ASUR, has encouraged resurgence in interest in the textile arts. In addition to creating an additional source of income in this highly impoverished area, the production of textiles for sale has also brought about a spiritual phenomena by fomenting an appreciation of local culture and by continuing the search for new meaning and artistic expression.

The textiles of both regions today have achieved exceptional levels of quality allowing them to be considered not only handcrafts but as works of art part of a greater universal patrimony.

• The Jalq'a
• The Tarabuco

The quality of the textiles depends on the weaver’s skill and mental conceptualization since many of the instruments used are simple and rudimentary. The vertical loom is of pre-Columbian origin and has not changed through the centuries allowing, nevertheless, the weaver to develop different techniques. In reference to raw materials, natural wool is utilized: sheep wool and cotton in the case of Tarabuco textiles and sheep and alpaca wool in the Jalq'a textiles.

The act of learning begins the moment a little girl, strapped to her mother’s back, can watch her mother weaving and can observe the handling of the threads and formation of the figures. The first practice with yarn begins between ages five and six and continues until a certain level of skill is achieved. The ASUR foundation has organized several years of training courses in traditional textiles where young and older girls can learn from experts, or ajllas, the skill and secrets of quality. Later they begin weaving small pieces before finally adventuring on to weave the more complicated aqsu.

The technique of the pallay (weaving with designs) requires acute visual concentration, and for this reason a weaver cannot weave more than five hours a day, alternating the activity of weaving with other domestic activities. It is astonishing to be able to observe the combining of threads in the formation of the figures that are present in the mind of the artist. The designs created have no previous model, each textile piece being a new and unique valuable work of indigenous art.

The Tarabuco designs are inscribed onto a more or less elongated rectangle that combines sheep’s wool and cotton. Inside this rectangle, through the disposition of form and color, a distinctive space is recreated displaying clear areas of segmentation, of symmetry, order, and the impression of self-control.

The Tarabuco recreate an ordered, perceptible, and luminous world. The abstract figures and complimentary designs that appear are derived from the styles that decorated the aqsus of their ancestors.

Iconic figures, however, are more notable in contemporary Tarabuco designs, because they appear more dynamic. The weavings from Tarabuco have acquired a new appeal: a fascination with the miniature executed with great care and delicacy. Horses, llamas, birds, daily scenes, local people, comprise the theme now appearing in the banded segments. In the words of the weavers themselves: “We weave what we see”. Everything that surrounds man or is object of his perception is properly highlighted by textures, contrasts, and skillful execution.

As seen in the case of the Tarabuco weavings, the Jalq’a aqsu is formed in rectangles, although less elongated. The space is recreated using a medium of sheep and alpaca wool and most often convey one continuous background extending without visible articulations or banding and perceived as a vast continuous space. There is no intention toward symmetry nor do they propose an ordered axis but rather the figures fill the space chaotically.

The central figures populating the Jalq’a textiles are animals known commonly as khurus, or invincible and savage beasts. The animals represented (horses, bulls, birds, lions) are based in reality but are uniquely represented in anatomically impossible ways. The imaginary animals depicted (birds with four feet, winged mammals, and humpbacked beasts with disfigured heads) are evoked with exquisite forms and frequently with great detail, like teeth, for example, something impossible to find in other Andean textiles.

The world evoked by Jalq’a animals is impossible to envision or even perceive of directly and is not governed by society’s laws or even those in nature recognized by man. It refers to a dark place, inhabited by the khurus, and is the dominion of an underworld diety known as the saxra and the Jalq’a have chosen this world to define their identity.