5: Trip to Tuchin
Trip to Tuchin
This weekend we went to Tuchin with Wilfrido, who was our tour guide. The aim of the trip was to visit the rural Zenú comunities, and get to know where a lot of the materials and artisans come from. Tuchin is Wilfrido's birthplace, and he still has a lot of family around Tuchin. This made him an execellent tour guide, which made our stay in Tuchin unforgetable.
The first stop was at a sacred ground for the Zenú's, a small river running to a small basin. The slippery ground followed us along the river to a beautiful opening with a small waterfall and caves. Wilfrido promised us some litterature about the history of this area, which we will get back to later. The next stop was at a Zenú family, the mother of the family was working on the material iraca (the stalk of palma de iraca), for small baskets and other crafts. The father of the family explained how they have problems in order to show who is the artisan of the different crafts. Hence he also pointed out transportation problems, since this part of the trade is very expensive. We bought some raw iraca stalks and some dried iraca strips in white and different colors. We also bought a varity of small object made from iraca - a basket, decorations and a fan. The rest of the day we were driving around to visit Wilfrido's family and trying to find some artisans weawing and sewing, but with no luck. However, we visited a big artisan shop, which had a bigger variety of crafts than what we have seen in Cartagena and San Jacinto. It was also clear that the quality was much better than what we have seen during our trip to San Jacinto. There were still a couple of things that we noticed: the mix of materials was not always aesthetically pleasing to us and the quality of zippers and the use of velcro make the products seem of less quality than they are.
The following morning we went to the market of Tuchin, which is really busy on Saturdays. Here there was trading of all sorts going on, but especially sombreos. At the market we bought raw materials of caña flecha in white and black, which we will use in our workshops with
the urban artisans in Cartagena.
About Tuchin
Tuchin is placed in the Cordoba region, 4 hours South East of Cartagena. The region has been inhabited by the Zenú's for thousands of years - it is also called the Lords of Sun Valley - one of the most important pre-Colombian cultures of Colombia. The Zenú indian culture used to be a big imperium in three areas; Finzenú which has the Sinu river and Valley - from here came the religious knowledge and artifacts. Panzenú, between the Sinu valley and the river of San Jorge was known for their argiculture and production of raw materials for the crafts. Zenufana, placed in Antioquia, was the governmental headquater and where most of the gold came from.
[Source; tuchin-cordoba.gov.co, accesed 2/11/15, 10am]
