La Mega Beadwork

Five women’s organizations joined together in 2010 to create the Mega Cooperativa Artesanal de los Saraguros to market Saraguro beadwork internationally. Through their beadwork these artists educate their children, support their communities and a women’s shelter. All five groups have created microloan programs for their members, which have enabled them to surmount crises, buy equipment to improve their artisan activities, and increase the welfare of their families in general. All together there are 80 members of La Mega Cooperativa Artesanal: 78 women and 2 men. The purchase of their jewelry has an impact on many lives and many families in Saraguro.

The Saraguros are subsistence dairy farmers who live in southern highland Ecuador, living at an elevation of 8500 feet, growing most of their own food—corn, beans, squash, babacos and tree tomatoes, and herding cattle and sheep. They are proud of their Incan ancestry, but their bead art does not come from that heritage. The need for pasture for their cattle led them to cross the Andes into the eastern slopes of Ecuador about a century ago. The Shuar who inhabited that region wore necklaces made of glass seed beads made in the Czech Republic that they acquired through trade up the Amazon River. They traded beads for cheese with the Saraguros. Saraguro girls and women wear the bead collars daily.

How the Saraguros learned to weave these beads with techniques unknown to other indigenous peoples of South America remains a mystery. In the early years (until the 1970s) cotton thread was waxed to pass through beads without a needle. It was exceedingly laborious. The introduction of bead needles and nylon thread in the 1970s led to an explosion of creative techniques and patterns that result in the art contained in this catalog. In the current decade, Czech Fire-polished beads (CFP) have reached the Saraguros, and these too have become part of their beadwork. Each piece is carefully and skillfully crafted by a master artisan. Slight variations will occur as a result.