In the Hands of the Weaver - Anyi

The air is heavy like a dirty woolen blanket each colorful strand pulled through the warp. Horns blare and traffic skids and screeches as unborn accidents are aborted by fancy-pants cops. The city slickers in their posh clothes zip along toward the outskirts avoiding those in dirndl-shaped, Polleras skirts and Monteras hats, as if ashamed, either of their own roots, or of the neglect. The road to El Salvador* is long weaving along rough pacific shore lines wefting past fishing villages, and cement factories with tangerine groves, each lane bringing the colors of modern life. The oranges, red and pinks of fine fabric repeated in on the metal surfaces of trucks, buses, and motor cabs. Each person’s destiny pulled and pushed by the action of man, earth and tide forward, ever forward..through the dunes of Lima’s desert. The invaders hug the hillside, thousands upon thousands, of rural poor, driven from the teat of the mother by earth quakes and the terror caused by The Shining Path.* Mao lives on in the upheaval caused by his ideology. Yet, so does ayni*, the helping hand of neighbor, the brown-skinned hand, more used to the bobbin than the gun. Here they have come in oneness a finished soul on a back-strap loom, dyed and drying in the heat of Lima’s desert they bloom. *El Salvador- a shanty-town 45 min outside of Lima with 350,000 residents. This community was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 excellence in social work and community growth **Shining Path-The Communist Party of Peru is a Maoist terrorist organization in Peru.[ *** ayni- Quechua culture is centered upon community and mutual help (“ayni”). Their social system is based on the principle of reciprocity: helping a neighbor to be helped in return.