Ñandutí: Crossroads of Two Worlds: The Lineage and Magic of Ñandutí

If judged by the scarce data available, the Canarian immigration to Paraguay never reached the proportions, even as a percentage, of other Spanish-American countries. There is no record of the arrival of Canarians in groups from the islands, not in the heroic years (15371600), nor in the following ones. [It is also] very doubtful that any Canarian woman was among the expeditionaries.

While a categorical assessment would demand deeper study (still unaccomplished and not easily done), nothing in colonial records seems to document the origins and chronology of many aspects of the Canaries' keen contribution to Paraguayan folkloric culture, except for the use of the toasted, steeped, or ground peanuts with milk, which resembles the gofio.¹ Even in this case, it cannot be ascertained whether this is an ancient practice, or a mere coincidence. Nevertheless, the Canarian imprint is deep, indelible, in something so subtle as the pattern of a lace, which due to its characteristics could be described as “national.”

In fact, when one speaks of Paraguay abroad (in America in general, and particularly in the South) the sun motif of Paraguay's typical lace, ñandutí, appears immediately to characterize the country before any references to its great rivers, its magnificent waterfalls (of which, the imposing Canendiyú will be dry in a short time, due to the hydroelectric works of Itaipú),² its forests (today already quite thinned), or its incredible flora.

Ñandutí is a Guaraní word. It means “spider's web.” This revealing name alludes to the lines of its basic pattern, which reminds us of the work of the epeira [orb-weaving spiders], an unavoidable guest of the vegetable patches and depths of all temperate climates; and perhaps a little to its technique (at least in its initial phases).

None of the chroniclers of the first centuries of the Paraguayan colonial history mentions the origin or development of this craft in Paraguay. The inventories of the inheritances in the 16th and 17th centuries say nothing to us of ñandutí; although they do give pathetic testimony of the pitiful poverty in which the conquerors lived, which in itself discards the possible presence of delicacies and filigree laces.

When, at the end of the 16 th century, or beginning of the 17th century, Ruiz Díaz de Guzmán³ talked about the skill of the Paraguayan women (creoles or mestizas) in needle work, he didn't mention which kind. Yet, just a few years later, ñandutí is mentioned in the first Anuas Jesuíticas (1610). So we learn that it is a “hand cloth,” an “embroidered” towel, a domestic object, which became traditional and continued to flourish until the first half of the 19th century.⁴ […]

To fix the date of when this Canarian lace took hold—becoming rooted in the colony as the plant hoja maravillosa⁵ (marvelous leaf)—is a thorny task that guarantees no success. Given the poverty of the colony, which lasted for almost two centuries, it is logical to think that certain kinds of lace, laborious to make and to maintain, did not have much opportunity for use, especially in the first few years. This said, the ample availability of labor (female slaves) alleviated any worry about the time dedicated to scratching an itch for adornment or priming the domestic environment.

Evidence suggests, however, that Reductions offered a much wider opportunity to display these ornamental luxuries. While community life there was rather ascetic, no ornament was considered excessive for worship. Let's refer to Reductions, and not churches in general, because the colonial peoples entrusted with the spiritual patronage of clergy and friars (Franciscans and others), forcibly contributed to the poverty of their jurisdiction. […]

If this lace was indeed born in the Reductions, missionaries themselves must have taught it. There is information regarding Canarian Fathers or Brothers arriving at the Reductions (certainly few, probably no more than two or three). Regardless, there is no record attributing to them the teaching of this lace. The only lace the chroniclers mention is the Flanders.

In the presence, or absence, of further data, some came to suppose that the ñandutí reached Paraguay by proxy from Brazil, although they don't explain how. In truth, there is a region in Brazil where ñandutí is known and made with relative amplitude: the State of Santa Catalina, in Florianopolis, where from a Bolsa de Rendeiras or “Lace maker's handbag,” ñandutí is sold.

Yet, it is significant that a) this lace is known there as “Paraguayan lace”; b) in folklore around this craft in Santa Catalina, the lace is said to have come from Paraguay. It is doubtless, then, that the process was inverse: the Brazilian ñandutí—probably made in regions near or bordering with Argentina—is a transculturation or simple extension of the Paraguayan craft. Simultaneously, in light of the geographical contiguity, the diffusion of ñandutí would seem to corroborate its existence as an object cultivated in the missionary workshops, since only from there it could have passed to other regions. […]

[When looking for clues as to ñandutí's origin] in the missionary craft lists provided in the Anuas and other chronicles, we find the trades “lace maker” as well as embroiderer, among the many workers listed. There is no mention of the practices of embroidery or lace making, although it is perfectly possible that this was the result of the very way in which the lists were compiled; additional records by [Father Sepp⁶ at the end of the 17th century] leave no doubt that women also knitted lace.

One of the notable aspects of the Missions was the change that took place in the allocation of trades when the labor regime and distribution of work was structured; men in Missions had to adopt activities that in tribal life were reserved for women, such as weaving, pottery (although there is record that women continued to participate domestically in this work). Crafts such as embroidery and restoration of altar cloths or ornaments were also reserved for men.

In sum, we find nothing in historical documents or chronicles that enlightens us about the way ñandutí came here, until Father Sánchez Labrador, when the expulsion of the Jesuits was forthcoming, decided to shine a dim light on this matter, oblivious to the good it would do to desperate researchers two centuries later.

Father Sánchez Labrador catechized the Mbyá-Guaicurú in Belen (a region called Tarumá on the Ypané River). During his evangelical work he traveled downriver to Asunción, where he was able to attend “the scene of the Spanish ladies who taught the indias of their Reduction— for practical purposes steered toward its religious sumptuousness—to weave lace with suns and sieves (fretwork).”⁷ Considering the late date of this record, we cannot consider any of the female contingents that arrived during the 16th century to be its protagonists; one would have to look for their origin in some Canarian family that arrived at the end of the 17th century (although no document supports this supposition either). Alternatively, information could be traced to others that arrived at the beginning, or during the first half, of the 18th century. While this would coincide chronologically with the records of Father Sepp, we must reiterate that his work does not allude at all to Tenerife lace. A very interesting detail—which fits perfectly into the missionary regime—is that the indias went to the capital to train in lacemaking, as female teachers would not have been admitted to the missions.

Certainly, the lack of explicit documents is not in and of itself conclusive. There are so many things that these documents omit. Sometimes omissions were intentional. Other times, those who wrote them did not consider that certain pieces of information would be necessary and precious to those who would come later.

The (few) Canarian women who moved to these regions must have resorted to making their traditional lace, perhaps due to their scarce numbers and the many challenges implied by adapting to an environment so different from their own. This is something so natural and logical that it requires no further comment. To continue making a craft in a foreign country with a regional focus is a way of continuing to be sentimental, nostalgic, and subconsciously attached to what has been left behind. Thus, those Canarian women—I'll reiterate that it did not need to be many, and that one would have sufficed—would have disseminated the sun lace locally […].

Its preferred production centers could, however, have been the missions. There is no contradiction between this fact and the appearance of the lace in the colony. The testimony of Sánchez Labrador is, in this respect, significant. In the colony [and outside of missions], as already indicated, the lace found greater obstacles for its dissemination, meaning it didn't factor in small home luxuries. On the other hand, in missions, where worship kept workshops in constant alert for the maintenance and beautification of Churches, lace was indispensable. The altar cloths were always numerous and rich; the linens of the sacristy, and above all the alb, were made of lace (as we know from the testimony of Father Sepp; the sacred vestments were sought to be as colorful and rich as possible in order to impress the religious neophyte, even if in the day-to-day the same priest would wear a ragged cassock). Therefore, lace makers were craftsmen linked to worship. After the expulsion [of the Jesuits], and attention to religious cult dropped dramatically alongside the demand for fineries, the lace disappeared from missions where cultic ornament was no longer necessary; on the other hand, it experienced an increase across the colony, extending its use in domestic garments—a change ushered in by the economic recovery that the Jesuit expulsion gave rise to in the colony, alongside other factors. As can be seen, there is little concrete evidence about the date and form in which the ñandutí—the lace from Tenerife—arrived in Paraguay.

The most interesting thing in this craft, as already indicated, is the way in which it has become consubstantial with the local feminine spirit, which selected this type of lace over other equally beautiful ones, easier to make and more practical to use at home, such as bobbin lace. The adaptability of the ñandutí to clothes destined to the daily hustle and bustle is overall doubtful. It is an ornament to be used extraordinarily. Yet, it is so beautiful that no one could resist the temptation to possess it and wear it on occasion. […]

The rapport of the ñandutí with the spirit of the Indigenous woman is manifested in several significant facts, beginning with its name.

No other female work practiced locally since colonial times has merited such a metamorphosis. For instance, the famous aopoí, or embroidered cloth, is named so simply because the aopoí is its support fabric. Aopoí is a “thin cotton” hand-woven fabric, different from the thick fabrics obtained with cotton, or caraguatá [a textile plant]. While such distinctions can be traced back to the early colonial period, the embroidery, technique, and motifs applied onto aopoí have not deserved a specific name.

This nominal transfiguration has led some to believe—second interesting fact—in the effective existence of the ñandutí as an Indigenous creation: a question that would be inane to discuss, but is interesting as a psychological index. Legends have been created around the origin of the Ñandutí. No other woman's work, not even ceramics (the other feminine spiritual discipline, which contrarily, is certainly of pre-Hispanic origin) has deserved any concern in this sense.

Some legends place their characters in the pre-Hispanic era: sons and daughters of chiefs appear in them, allied to the tiger, the feared beast par excellence, and the spider, an animal of universal diffusion, whose bond with lace has an ineluctable analogical root. None of the legends allude to the Hispanic origin of the lace. Told in whichever form, the legends always feature a couple in love, while the tiger and the spider are constant elements. The hunter in love who goes out in search of the tiger skin: his remains are later found covered by a fine spider's web, which the obsessed bride tries to reproduce.⁸ In a less widespread legend, an Indian woman, locked up by her cruel owner in a basement or cave, soothes her sorrows by imitating the web that a spider wove in a cranny.

As already suggested, it is very difficult to pinpoint the time of these legends, as well as the place in the country where they originated. Most of them have been “re-created”; they belong to the collection of what [the botanist Mosè Giacomo Bertoni] called “a literary sport,” in full swing during the final decades of the 19th century.

[The third significant element linking ñandutí to the Indigenous woman] is tourism, which absorbs a considerable volume of production. However, if tourism explains the large number of embroiderers, it does not justify the consubstantiation of the ñandutí with the spirit of the Paraguayan woman. Above all, it does not explain its fidelity to tradition when faced by ample demand and similar, easy requests.

The final remarkable circumstance is ñandutí's extraordinary vitality. It survived a fire that otherwise devoured so many traces of Paraguay's Indo-Hispanic cultural past: the so-called Great War [1864-70]. By simply looking at the demographic ratio of its survivors—250,000 women and children against 28,000 men—it is easily deducible how female crafts suffered considerably less than those of the male sex, which emerged from the conflict mutilated or diminished in their repertoire of techniques and motifs. However, the diffusion, prestige and extensive cultivation of the ñandutí since the war, and especially from 1950 onward, is irrefutable proof of its roots […].

In 1868, the population of Itauguá, where according to those indications the ñandutí was practiced with certain amplitude, was forced to abandon their homes and follow the steps of the army like the others in turn (it was the strategy of the devastated land, which gave rise to the so-called Residenta). The craft industry disintegrated.

After the war, oral references affirm that only one of all the Itaugüeña ñandutí weavers survived to return to her town; but the dedication and enthusiasm put into the work by this unique lace maker was enough to ignite around her the interest and fervor—justified also by the economic stimulus—that revitalized the craft, until it became an occupation and coat of arms of Itauguá, extending even to nearby towns, such as Altos. During this time, even families with the most notable surnames were forced to subsist through manual labor, the products of which were sold by former slaves, still faithful to their old owners. Simultaneously, the ñandutí found a new market with the immigrant population, made up of entrepreneurs and wealthy folk, who came to the country as early as 1869. It is also then that whims and fantasies of the feminine portion of the foreign population prompted the appearance of articles like parasols and fans made of ñandutí. […]

Summarily, we can only affirm as a categorical and characteristic fact, the deep, intimate roots of this baroque and subtle craft in the Paraguayan woman. For such characteristics, this craft wasn't kindred with its spiritual coordinates, and its origins are paradoxically idiosyncratic. More than once when referring to this lace, I have pointed to this, the most interesting feature of its existence and practice, worthy of being dwelled upon by psychologists and anthropologists: the perfect rapport of these handcrafted forms with the spirit of the Paraguayan woman, or vice versa, if you like.

For a while, perhaps, this predilection—it is a simple hypothesis, like others already enunciated before—could be shared with the counted thread embroidery (bordado a hilos contados), worthy of a study as well. But today, this craft has been denaturalized by the influx of the most heterogeneous designs, which displace those of traditional ancestry in response to tourist demands. The ñandutí is undoubtedly the practice that most clearly reflects a temperament, a sensitivity, and perhaps even sociological complexes that concern Paraguayan women.

Ñandutí is unquestionably the lace of Tenerife. Its basic designs and its imagery are unmistakable. Regardless, it is at the same time something substantially representative of the Paraguayan feminine. The spider that weaves its web in perfect solitude, to shelter, protect, and feed its offspring, finds in ñandutí the paradigm; the Paraguayan woman herself, “father and mother of her children,” according to an Argentine poet, doubles this image. Few Hispanic-American women will be able to boast a greater number of verbal tributes—poetry and prose—dedicated to her by the men of her country. No other will have been more alone than she in the crucial battles of life.

This woman was never accompanied by man (with all the spiritual connotations that the word companion implies) in the course of her tribal or Christian existence for centuries: even less so perhaps after the war of 1864 to 1870, for the reasons noted. A war in which, however, she gave to the homeland even more than man. Because the latter gave his life, but she gave her children's and did not haggle over her own. And if the country rose again, it was actually because of her own effort and not of its men's; these were occupied, scarce as their numbers were, in fighting among themselves and killing the few who had survived the war in the montoneras [irregular combat forces].

The Ñandutí is the geography-labyrinth of perfect solitude. In the lace's design, the sun or basic wheel repeats itself (as the daily rounds of life do), enlightening monotonous days, which the woman tries to diversify, interweaving and decorating its spokes, and giving rise—with only the resource of the warp—to infinite stylized figures, sometimes quite fantastic to a degree, but which in the subconscious of the weaver are the perfect design of her identity.

These motifs make up an experiential world, and in it an imagistic and psychological feminine panorama, where creativity—normally tied up or simply not required or stimulated by other external factors—finds its scope. A world of familiar and immediate images that give the pathetic and secretly caressed measure of her experiences, of her nostalgia, of her daily immolation. Let's try a division of them according to [animal, vegetal, and domestic worlds as well as finishing or filling stitches …]

Those in the know say there are even more motifs: we have not been able to find them in the current lists, but Dr. Gustavo González, who dedicated much of his time to the study of the ñandutí, mentions some more. To these we must add additional ones that make up the outside world: tocón [stump], tacurú [termite mounds] simple or double. A world not only limited, but also desolate. For the stump, that is, the tree root that rises like a pedestal from the ground (devastated for cultivation), indicates the emotional mutilation, renouncing all that is freedom to flourish, to submit to the harsh law of sowing and harvesting. The tacurús or termite mounds recall the uncultivated land where the plow cannot plunge, because prevented by those towers as hard as granite, constructed with clay and ant saliva. The symbol of despair. Only one symbol is spared in this desolate series: the palm tree, a viewer of horizons. But the palm tree or the coconut tree, which provides so many elements for daily life—roof, walls, fruits, food for the cows, and even fibers to spin thread—may well be at the same time a symbol of her, of the weaver, generous and alone always in her multiple providences.

The domestic world is as small as that of objects, which are like the letters of an alphabet of their domestic servitude. The parsimonious lantern for the lighting of the short evenings; the niche or family religious shrine, which occupies a privileged place in the house with the most popular or beloved Patron Saint. […] The oven, which represents the highest triumph of the housewife, depositary of the traditional recipe of the chipá.⁹

The animal world is a world of humility and little companionships: […] the weaving spider—an iterative image of herself; the parrot's beak (not the whole parrot), that part of the bird symbolizing the nostalgia of companionship, the nostalgia of a voice, although it says nothing, or perhaps it's the ironic allusion to the empty words of a man who once, and again, lied to her. […]

The plant world is also familiar and close. The daisy, dream spinner; the thistle, which pricks, but whose fiber also serves to weave (it served in the preconquest and later in times when there was a lack of cotton and those to cultivate it); the passion flower … there aren't any triumphant flowers in the repertoire […].

The world of legends … so moving in its scarcity. The miracle of the cross … something which she clings to, in order to keep on fighting each day. And the tale of the kidnapper, able to take away the only thing she has for herself, and which the man sometimes comes to take away: the son.

Often, interpretations of the subconscious, or simply selective, roots of these motifs sound to many like romantic fantasies or jokes. Yet, they will not be so for those who know this Paraguayan woman, who have approached her world of solitude (soon young and never lost), her repetitive time, where each day is traced over another, and her life that rotates around a series of chores that are always the same, like the shadow twisting around her farmhouse, which only ever manages to capture a vague hint of difference or joy: the fugitive “tail” of the furtive or capricious animal, footprints that move away.

The lace, in its realization, has discontinuous operating characteristics—different from other lace, such as crochet or bobbin lace. Each element of it, even the most characterizing ones such as the suns, is executed separately, based on elementary “sample” designs. These are first sketched on a fine cloth, which in turn covers a background canvas, perfectly stretched on a stretcher. The lace maker then stretches each spoke of her “suns” using pins to tend the thread. (Sometimes we have seen small pieces being made over pin cushions). On the tense radial threads of these suns, which form the outer contour of the garment and its eventual internal ornamental divisions, the lace maker “weaves” the designs chosen from a given list.

This does not mean that it offers any difficulty in assembling whichever kind of apparel, from scarves to umbrellas, from tablecloths to blouses and from mantillas to hats, and even veils and wedding dresses. A Paraguayan writer described one such López wearing a cape lined with ñandutíes in Paris;¹⁰ this could just be the writer's imagination, but it is also an example of what can be done with this lace: in either its simpler or more ambitious forms, it poses no further technical challenges.

Once the contours of the design have been drawn by a given number of wheels or suns, you have the overall shape of the garment (or of each of its pieces, which can be joined like regular pieces of fabric). The suns can either be all the same, a symmetrical combination, or all different from each other; their basic contour can be further embellished by lace or festoons, woven in with the previously mentioned finishing stitches. The next step is to fill in the empty spaces within the contours of the suns, using the already mentioned stitches, each known by a different name (star, guava flower, filigree), and which are exactly the same as those used in wither Canarian fretwork or Venetian stitch. The filling in is done directly if the piece is small. However, with pieces of a greater scale, such as tea tablecloths onward to even larger pieces (bedspreads), the work surfaces are distributed, always by means of wheels organized and woven in sufficient numbers and shapes to allow for the necessary designs or internal schemes to emerge. These designs are symmetrical when the garment is. However, when the garment allows it or requires it due to its size, there are inexhaustible numbers of possible combinations, arrangements, or conjugation of motifs.

In this way, a tablecloth for a tea table can be made by a central circle inserted in a square, which in turn appears contained within a circle, once again within a square, etc. No geometric shape offers obvious difficulties for its design, whether made on a single base or distributed on symmetrical surfaces. While the realization of an asymmetrical or irregular piece may require more attention or work, it certainly does not make it impossible, as evidenced by the realization of wedding dresses, for example.

The result is lacework of delicate transparency, simultaneously incredibly visually rich (not simply flamboyant) and rich in its overall architecture and detail. If there is a flaw in this lace, as hinted at already, it is its very delicacy that determines its practical limitations. Each piece of ñandutí is a noli me tangere (touch me not). Even when knitted with thick threads, it is not for frequent use. When woven with fine thread or silk, it is something to be looked at and not touched: a lace made with snow crystals. To wash the lace and return it to its pristine state of exquisite smoothness is painstaking work. Of course there is a technique for this, but it is a technique that requires careful attention, care, and time. Yet, aren't those things that cost the most effort and work those that are most coveted?

The demands of Tourism have had a deleterious impact on more than one of the local crafts. While ñandutí is one of the least affected so far, it has still been influenced by Tourism in several ways. One of these is the multiplication of the garments or objects onto which it is applied; this does not affect the typology of stitches or motifs, but it does vulgarize the work a little. Already dating back several centuries, the most visible impact is evident in the introduction of ordinary threads and, above all, of color. The ñandutí of colored thread, sometimes mixed, clearly loses in the ranking. Fortunately, the ñandutí in white or ecru and made in a fine thread commands the panorama with its dominance.

The ñandutí, let's repeat this, is the lace of Tenerife, which when transferred to these latitudes, finds an echo and a subtle resonance in the spirit of the woman of the village. She has adopted it like a long- awaited language, with which to express longings, dreams, solitude. The anthropologists say that “it is the lace of the Canary Islands, which here suffers or experiences inevitable technical and ecological modifications.” However, they do not explain why the Paraguayan woman embraced this lace like an inexhaustible message, and within it, deposits her desire for transfiguration, for sublimation, which is poetry. There are many signs of Spanishness in this land that prides itself on its mestizo character. But if I had to choose a single logo of this spiritual duality that is blossoming within, I would choose a blanket of ñandutí.

TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: This text has been edited and shortened by the translator. Originally published in Spanish by Gustavo González and Josefina Plá, Paraguay: El Ñandutí (Asunción: Cuardernos de Divulgación Museo Paraguayo de Arte Contemporaneo, 1983), 9–28.