Hilandería Warmi: Identidad y economía del norte argentino

In the 1990s, Rosario Quispe, a llama herder from the Argentine Puna, founded the Warmi Sayajsunqo Association, which means "Persevering Women" in Spanish, along with other women. Through the association, they achieved substantial improvements in the healthcare system, especially for women. They also organized to market handicrafts and inaugurated the first university in the Puna region. They established a community microcredit system similar to the Grameen Bank, which allows producers to purchase fencing and other materials, as well as start small businesses. One of the most important projects of "the Warmis," as the women of the association are known, was their participation in the return of the first spinning and weaving mill in the Puna to the city of Abra Pampa. The story dates back to 1922, when the government of the province of Jujuy acquired machinery from Europe to start the first spinning mill in the Puna. When the machines arrived in the small town of Abra Pampa, however, it was discovered that operating them required electricity and running water, two services that were far from being available in the region at that time. The machines remained stored for thirty years, becoming almost a myth, until in the 1950s a public-private partnership was formed, which moved the machines to the provincial capital, San Salvador de Jujuy. It operated there until 2012, when the company, by then exclusively privately owned, went bankrupt. In their quest to recover the machines and the original project, the Warmis partnered with some businesspeople who provided the financing to acquire the factory. From this partnership, “Hilandería Warmi” (Warmi Spinning Mill) was born, and the process of returning the company to the Puna region began, almost a century later. Although the increase in production volume is significant, the spinning mill alone does not have the capacity to process the large quantity of fiber generated by the animals of the Jujuy Puna. Many producers stop shearing their animals because the price paid for the fiber is far below expectations and not profitable. Those who buy it are generally middlemen who then resell the material to spinning mills. The model proposed by Warmi involves buying directly from the producer, which eliminates intermediaries and allows for a better price. Today, they buy their raw material from more than 600 families in the Puna region. Author: Hernán Paganini Camera: Dalmiro Zabala, H. Paganini Warmi Spinning Mill: www.warmi.org www.dw.com/creativeeconomy #dwcreativeeconomy