The history of traditional cotton cultivation and (¿the craft production? or ¿the cottage industry?) of textiles in the Santander Department (North-East of Colombia)

In 1982 and 1985, a study was undertaken of the traditional cotton growing and textile manufacture in Santander, a province which had known a period of prosperity mostly due to this activity.

The Colombian cotton tradition has two origins, one coming from the Guane Indians and the other from the Spanish conquerors, which themselves were heirs through the Arabs of oriental cotton technology.

The research was undertaken in four villages: Charalá, Ocamonte, El Socorro and Suaita. It made use of archives (municipal and national), of accounts made by travelers, of oral memories and the observation of techniques used by a small group of old people in Charalá and Ocamonte who had kept the cotton tradition alive.

This study includes an overview of the history of cotton and textiles in Colombia, emphasizing features specific to Santander. During the colonial period, the policies of protection by tariff-walls made the growing of cotton and production of home-made cloth a prosperous activity, in spite of the increasing pressure from the introduction of smuggled material from Europe. During the 19th century, competition from fabrics coming from Great Britain initiated the inexorable decline of home-made textile production. It soon became limited to the supply of the limited market of peasant working clothes.

In the 20th century the national textile industry took off. It was especially prosperous in the province of Medellín, whereas the attempt to create a factory right in the middle of the Santander and Boyacá cotton-producing region turned out to be a failure. The national industry gave the finishing blow to (¿craft textile production? Or textile cottage industry?). Slightly later, mechanized cultivation in the hot valleys between the mountain chains and along the coast tolled the knell of cotton production in the eastern Andes.

The traditional methods of cotton cultivation on the mountain slopes are described in this work. Cotton is never cultivated alone: it is always associated with food-producing plants such as sugar cane, manioc, corn and beans.

In those regions, where great landowners predominate, the campesino is a share-cropper. Conditions for this kind of situation and the rules that regulate the sharing of the harvest are detailed.

A chapter is devoted to the description of the handicraft techniques used to make the fabrics: picking-off (¿is this the right word for separating the seed from the fiber in the case of cotton?), spinning and weaving. The coexistence of pre-Colombian techniques with those coming from Europe is a noteworthy characteristic of the situation. An audiovisual (¿is this correct for a collection of slides accompanied by a commentary?) showing the production process is available.

This research is the subject of two publications in Colombia: Pierre Raymond and Beatriz Bayona, Vida y muerte del algodón y los tejidos santandereanos, 1982, Universidad Javeriana; in 1985 editorial Ecoe published a new edition, completed and corrected. In 1990, it was used to set up an exhibition organizad by the Banco de la República (the Colombian bank of issue), called Historia del algodón en Santander, accompanied by a catalogue of the same name (Banco de la República, 1990).

This research has also led several NGOs to try to revive a handicraft production which would safeguard a tradition as well as being a source of income for the region. Following those initiatives, a cooperative of about twenty members is presently functioning in Charalá (Cooperativa comunera de recuperación del lienzo de la tierra). Furthermore, there is a project to create in Charalá an ecomuseum about the regional cotton tradition.

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