cochonilha vale ouro: 2014

- William J. Conklin, an archaeologist based at the Textile Museum in Washington, has said, 'The role of textiles in Andean societies as carriers of meaning and power is different from anything else that I know.' Citing the example of Huaca Prieta, a north-coast site dated to about 1500 BC, and some early textiles there were not apparently intended to be worn, Conklin notes 'the incredible fact that weaving [in Peru] was invented for what we might call "conceptual art" - to communicate meaning - and only afterward was it used for clothing'. (p 201)

- Cochineal comes from an insect that lives on prickly pear cacti as a parasite; it is both dye-fast and produces a red of extraordinary intensity. The Spanish conquistadores were amazed, as they had seen nothing like it before - indeed, along with potato, if less heralded, cochineal was one of great exports from the New World to the Old. The Spanish commanded a monopoly of the trade back to Europe, and so were able to exclude England; 'the fiery Latin red' attributed to the Mediterranean countries by the colder Protesant North may well come from this. Certainly cardinals were able to obtain a much richer scarlet cloak after the conquests of Peru and Mexico, where cochineal was also found. (p 202)

- Cochineal was a valuable crop, selling at $12 a kilo in Peru and between $50 and $80 a kilo on the world market. The Andean peoples had always used a variety of ingenious methods to sustain it, planting new cacti from stock already infected by th beetle and then fertilizing each cactus with wood-ash. They also kept animals away by enclosing the plants and even lit fires and put up cloches on cold nights to prevent the insects from freezing. Some 200 tones of cochineal are still produced in Peru each year, a fabulous amount when you consider that each insect weighs less than an ounce. Peru is the only country in the world to produce it in such quantity; it is the country that dyed the world red.

For Andean weavers, cochineal has been infinitely versatile. When mixed with urine, lime or old chichi, it can produce many shades of red. (…) the cochineal insect was the most important source of dye; it gave red of such vibrancy that it is still used for Campari and certain shades of lipstick.

(…)

The use of cochineal seems to have extended back to the very earliest weavings. On my travels I had seen it on five-thousand-year-old scraps of cotton, stained into the floor of Moche pyramid-tombs, and wrapped around the head of Huari shaman. It had bled through the prehistory of the country.

When the Italian geographer Raimondi visited the Nasca area in the nineteenth century, he managed to miss the lines completely (perhaps because they were so unusual, he wasn't looking for them), but he did note that the inhabitants still maintained the ancient tradition of obtaining and using cochineal.