San Francisco de Alfarcito is a village located in the Puna Jujeña, an Andean region within Argentina. In this territory lives a Kolla community, one of the 33 indigenous communities of the Salinas Grandes-Guayatayoc basin affected by lithium exploitation. It is an extremely arid rural area where peasant communities rely on groundwater obtained from springs and wells. With this water, they irrigate crops and maintain herds of llamas, which are their livelihood and provide fiber for textiles, their main economic activity. Lithium exploitation requires enormous amounts of water for brine extraction and metal separation, water that is extracted from underground networks, thus affecting the availability of this precious resource throughout the surrounding territory.

This project showcases the work carried out by the women of this community in the weaving of textiles, under a cooperative logic, in harmony with the surrounding territory and the other beings that inhabit it. Reclaiming ancestral knowledge inherited from their Andean culture, they spin yarn from the sheared wool of llamas using the pushka, prepare natural dyes with herbs and plants from the area, wind the skeins, and weave on looms or with needles; the entire process is collectively articulated among the women of the different families that make up the community. In a context of brutal extractivist advance in these lands, the imminent danger of running out of water and having to relocate to large cities becomes apparent. That is why I consider it especially important to give visibility to sustainable economies like those carried out by these women weavers, as guardians of their land and culture.