Chambira Crafts
Domesticated llama and alpaca species are raised commercially
The chambira palm (Astrocaryum chambira) grows in the more westerly, drier areas of the Amazon Rainforest found mostly in eastern Ecuador, northern Peru, and southern Colombia and Venezuela. Unlike other areas of the Amazon, the rainforest here is comprised of clay soils and terrain that does not flood due to rising river levels or rainfall. An important part of the Amazon year-round economy, chambira fiber is used to make a wide variety of products from hammocks to fish nets to everyday string and dental floss. The stiffer fronds make durable fans and brooms.
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Chambira Crafts
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The most sought after of the chambira fronds are the cogollos, the new tender shoots. The best known of the chambira crafts made from the cogollos are shigra bags, used to carry everything from farm produce to lipstick and wallets. Among the other decorative crafts made from cogollos are baskets, belts, macramé and necklaces, offering a strong fiber on which to string beads.
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At maturity, the chambira tree reaches a height of about eighty feet. It is one of two plant species from which fibers are derived to make the popular shigra bags. The growing conditions of the Amazon’s chambira palm are very different from those that produce the other major source of shigra fiber, a succulent agave species that grows in the Andes.
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It is usually men who extract the chambira leaves from the Amazon Rainforest and women who process the fibers and weave them into end products. Growing at the top of the tree, the leaves are cut using a long blade to distance the extractor from the chambira’s spiny trunk. Back in the village, the cogollos are divided into narrow strips and may be placed in a kettle of water over an open fire to soften and lighten their color before being hung to dry in the sun. The fibers are dyed or may be left in the natural hue. In earlier times, only natural dyes were used, but today the dye may be natural or synthetic.
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The end product and use of the chambira item determines what looping technique will be used. Strands are tied at one end and rolled together into twine. As visitors to the Ecuador Amazon or rainforest lodges of the Peru Amazon will see, chambira is woven loosely and knotted when making a fishing net or hammock, and tighter if a shigra is being crafted.
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Chambira handicrafts make a popular souvenir from Peru Amazon tours in the environs of Iquitos or travel to Ecuador Amazon regions such as Yusuni National Park. To learn all about chambira palms from forest to market, read “Making and Marketing Chambira Hammocks and Bags in the Village of Brillo Nuevo, Northeastern Peru by Jaana Vormisto of the University of Turku, Finland, published in the journal of Economic Botany, 2002, one of the sources for this article.
