WAREKE (Origin of Wayùu fabric)

 

Traditional Wayùu story. Recovered by Mery Ellen Mejía Millian.

 

1. Wayùu tradition tells that somewhere on the Guajira peninsula, at the beginning of the Wayûu people, a young hunter named Irunuu, found an orphan girl called Wareke, abandoned to her fate.

 

2. The saddened hunter took her to her house, asking her sisters to take care of her and teach her feminine domestic skills.

 

3. But the young man's three sisters rejected the girl from the first moment, so he himself would take care of her care and learning.

 

4. He taught him to bring water every day to drink and to prepare chicha, in a donkey loaded with clay jars.

5. He also taught him how to milk the goats in the house, which he had to do very early every morning.

 

6. But when Irunuu went hunting, the three sisters insulted and mistreated the girl:

 

7. -Get away, you are very cool. What are you doing here, louse? -

Irunuu's sisters shouted at him

 

8. On one of the nights of the traditional confinement of the Wayùu girls, Wareke transformed into a beautiful girl who took out of her mouth the threads with which she wove her blankets, sashes, chinchorros and wayucos.

 

9. The sisters, upon discovering the fabrics, told Irunuu that they were their works.

10. However, Irunuu discovered that she was really the girl transformed into a teenager during the traditional confinement, who had made the weavings.

11. Then Irunuu punished the sisters by turning them into bats.

 

12. Irunuu, in love with the beautiful young woman, wanted to marry her, but when he tried to hug her, a piece of spider web (kannás) remained in her hands, because the beautiful girl had turned into a spider and had disappeared among the branches of a tree.

 

13. Irunuu, shocked, collected the fabrics and when he returned to his house, he kept them so that the new Wayùu generations could learn the art of weaving.

 

14. In this way, this beautiful artisanal work began to spread throughout the Guajira peninsula.

 

15. This is why today we find it in cities like: Riohacha, Uribia, Manaure, Maicao. Albania. Barrancas, San Juan del Cesàr, Dibulla, Distraction, Hatonuevo, Urumita. Fonseca,La Jagua del Pilar and even in Mongûi and Cabo de la Vela, chinchorros, wayucos, guaireñas, sashes, bracelets and backpacks made with the looms that the Wayùu learned to use from Wareke: "The spider."

 

END