The Craftsmanship at the Heart of the Chilean Countryside

Craftsmanship at the Heart of the Chilean Countryside

Author : Lilian Francisca Sepulveda Torres
Reading Time : 3 minutes

A goldsmith who designs rural poetry into her jewelry…
A group of neighbors selling the weavings they learned from their grandmothers…
An entire village of women weaving with horsehair…
Two sisters who walk four hours through the hills searching for raw materials to weave baskets…
A grandmother who remembers traveling by cart to the beach to sell her baskets…
A woman shearing a sheep…
A couple of goldsmiths who incorporate natural materials from the earth into their jewelry…
A leatherworker who, together with his wife, crafts the finest reins in the country…
A man teaching others how to make spurs…
A woman who creates figures from corn husks…
A man who built a fantasy world out of wood in his backyard…
A retired teacher who rescues century-old wood that others want to burn for firewood…
A mother handcrafting clay in the backyard of her home…
A peasant poet and folk singer who weaves wicker in his spare time…
A man born with a crippled foot who chose the craft of weaving wheat-straw hats…
An 89-year-old grandmother who breaks clay with a hammer heavier than she is…

The craftsmanship of a people is not just an aesthetic souvenir. It is history, it is weariness, childhood memories, mistakes, a whole community spirit, and the dreams of those who shape it. In the Maule region, located 200 kilometers south of the capital Santiago, in central Chile, hundreds of artisans cultivate different materials from the land and ancestral knowledge. Getting to know them is a journey into the past and into the heart of the country’s rural culture.

With a Mediterranean climate, this region remains ruled by rural life: viticulture is the most important industry, and the social culture is the result of an ancient blend between Spanish settlers and the native peoples. Only 4.3% of the population identifies as Indigenous,
because in Maule, people simply call themselves huasos and huasas (men and women of the Chilean countryside).

Thanks to excellent connectivity—90% of the roads are paved—it’s easy to reach the homes of the artisans spread across the region’s coasts, mountains, and valleys. The region is home to two crafts recognized by UNESCO as Living Human Treasures:
the Loceras of Pilén, who make clay utensils without a potter’s wheel, in the southern part of the region, and the horsehair-weaving artisans of Rari, in the foothills of the Andes, who create especially colorful miniature jewelry and decorations.

The international cooperation project titled “Traditional Craft Route, Maule Region”, made possible thanks to the collaboration between Village Monde, Fundación TrekkingChile and University of Quebec in Chicoutimi, collected a field sample of 49 artisans from the area, showcasing the diversity of styles, stories, and materials that still stubbornly and proudly survive against the passage of time and the pressure of technology.

Each story is a treasure;
each object a work of art;
and each experience shared with themis a journey worth taking.

Let yourself be inspired by these stories and explore the work of each artisan at this link:
“Traditional Craft Route, Maule Region” Available soon!

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