"Su Yao's Dazzling Counterattack Chapter 108"
The Andean sun hung low over the altiplano, painting the snow-capped peaks of the Cordillera Real in hues of pink and gold. Su Yao's jeep bumped along a dirt track, passing women in pollera skirts herding alpacas and children flying kites shaped like condors, until it reached a cluster of stone huts surrounded by terraced fields. In a courtyard where a fire crackled beneath a pot of quinoa stew, a group of Aymara weavers sat on woolen rugs, their fingers twisting soft alpaca fibers into threads as fine as spider silk.
Their leader, 62-year-old Mama Rosa, looked up from her work, her face weathered by the high-altitude sun. She wore a chullo (knitted hat) with earflaps embroidered in geometric patterns and held up a finished poncho—a masterpiece of cream and brown alpaca wool, its surface covered in motifs of llamas, mountains, and the chakana (Inca cross). "This is our khuchi (heart)," she said in Aymara, her voice carrying the rasp of thin mountain air. "It remembers the land that feeds us, the animals that warm us."
Aymara weaving, refined over 3,000 years, is a sacred practice tied to the rhythms of the pacha (world). Alpacas, revered as "gifts from Pachamama (Mother Earth)," are sheared only during the full moon, when their wool is said to hold the most llama (energy). The fibers are sorted by hand—baby alpaca (the softest, from the first shearing) for ceremonial garments, coarser huacaya wool for everyday use—and spun using drop spindles carved from queuña wood, which grows only at high altitudes. "Each thread takes three days to spin properly," Mama Rosa's granddaughter, 24-year-old Lina, explained, showing a skein of yarn dyed with cochineal (crimson) and mollusk shells (purple). "Too fast, and it breaks like a promise; too slow, and Pachamama grows impatient. We sing to the wool as we spin—songs about the mountains, the stars, the way the wind moves through the grass."
Dyes are mixed with rituals passed down from yatiris (shamans). Q'olle (a yellow root) is harvested at dawn, when the dew still clings to the leaves, and boiled with puya plant ash to fix the color. Indigo, traded from the lowlands, is fermented in clay pots buried beneath the fire, with women taking turns stirring it while reciting prayers to Inti (the sun god). "The colors must 'breathe' with the wool," Lina said, tracing a yellow stripe on a manta (blanket). "This yellow is for the q'oya (golden grass) that feeds the alpacas—without it, the dye fades, like a memory forgotten."
Su Yao's team arrived after their Irish project, drawn to the Aymara's mastery of alpaca wool and their deep connection to the land. They brought samples of seaweed-metal threads blended with alpaca fibers, hoping to create a fabric that retained the wool's legendary softness while adding durability against the altiplano's extreme cold. But when Lin displayed a machine-spun sample with printed patterns, Mama Rosa's husband, 65-year-old Tio Juan—a yatiri with a headdress of condor feathers and a pouch of sacred coca leaves—let out a low growl. "Your machine spins without soul," he said, tossing the fabric onto the dirt. "Our wool remembers the hands that sheared it, the songs that spun it. This thing has no memory—it's a stone, not a blanket."
Tensions flared when an unexpected cold snap hit the altiplano, with temperatures dropping below freezing at night. The alpacas, stressed by the sudden chill, stopped eating, their wool growing thin and brittle. A storm swept through, flattening the q'olle fields and flooding the indigo fermentation pots, turning the dye a murky green. "The mountains reject your metal," women whispered as they huddled around the fire, wrapping thin blankets around shivering children. With the Qhapaq Raymi (feast of the mountains) approaching, when new mantas are presented to Pachamama as thanks, the community faced disaster. "We need offerings for the sacred stones," Mama Rosa said, her voice tight as she stroked a weak alpaca. "Without them, the snow will never melt, and our animals will die."
That night, Su Yao sat with Mama Rosa in her hut, where a clay stove simmered with chicha morada (purple corn drink). The walls were hung with mantas depicting Tio Juan's vision quests, and a small shrine held a stone from Illimani (the sacred mountain), draped in red cloth. "I know your textiles are more than cloth," Su Yao said, sipping the sweet, tart drink. "They're a conversation with the earth. We want to listen, not interrupt."
Mama Rosa smiled, passing her a piece of ocopa (cheese dip) with roasted potatoes. "My mama (grandmother) used to say that even thin wool can be woven into something warm, if you weave with love," she said. "But your thread—maybe it's a sign. Young people leave for La Paz now, working in factories. They don't know how to shear alpacas or mix dyes. We need to show them our weaving still speaks to Pachamama."
Over the next three weeks, the team worked alongside the weavers. They helped build shelters for the alpacas, lining them with straw and ichu grass to keep out the cold, and trekked to a high valley with Tio Juan to gather wild q'olle, learning to chant the Pachamama prayer as they dug up the roots. "Ama suwa, ama llulla, ama qhilla (Don't steal, don't lie, don't be lazy)," they sang, their voices blending with the Aymara words until the rhythm felt like a heartbeat.
Lin experimented with coating the seaweed-metal threads in alpaca fat and quinoa wax, a mixture Aymara use to waterproof leather. "It needs to move like alpaca wool, not against it," she said, showing Mama Rosa a swatch where the metal threads had become almost invisible, adding warmth without altering the fabric's softness. Mama Rosa pressed it to her cheek, closing her eyes. "The alpaca spirit accepts this," she said.
Fiona collaborated with Lina to design a new pattern: the chakana cross (representing the three worlds) merging into ocean waves, with metal threads outlining the cross to make it shimmer like sunlight on snow. "It honors your mountains and our sea," Fiona explained, and Tio Juan nodded, sprinkling coca leaves over the design as he recited a blessing. "Pachamama's body includes both earth and water," he said. "This cloth understands her."
On the morning of Qhapaq Raymi, the weavers gathered at the base of Illimani, where their collaborative manta was laid before the sacred stone. The fabric glowed in the sun: the chakana in traditional reds and golds, transitioning into waves of blue alpaca wool, with metal threads making the cross seem to float, as if held up by the wind. Mama Rosa draped a corner over Su Yao's shoulders—a chakana and a wave, stitched together. "Now you're part of our pacha," she said.
As the team's jeep descended the mountain, they could hear the zampoña (panpipe) music starting, and through the window, they saw Lina teaching a group of children to spin alpaca wool, the seaweed-metal thread spooled beside her. Su Yao thought of the alpacas, now grazing contentedly in the sun, and the way the metal threads had learned to blend with the wool—how foreign elements, when treated with humility, could become part of a tradition as old as the Andes.
Her phone buzzed with a message from Ireland: Saoirse had sold their collaborative Aran jumper to a heritage trust, funding a workshop for young knitters. Su Yao smiled, typing back: "We've added new patterns in the altiplano—your turn to weave something that honors both the past and the future."
Somewhere in the distance, the zampoñas played a melody that mingled with the wind whistling through the peaks, a harmony as ancient as the mountains and as new as the rising sun.