Few travelers or tourists will ever visit Pamplona Alta, though it lies only a few kilometers south of Lima. A small link in the vast chain of poverty that surrounds the Peruvian capital, this pueblo joven or young town is home to over three hundred thousand people. The pueblos are collections of the poorest people, often displaced by terrorism and poverty from villages in the Andes. With unemployment near 80%, people have few sources of income.
Women often shoulder both the burdens and responsibilities of the society. Their homes are usually without plumbing, water, or electricity and provide little protection against the cold, wind, or damp. Most of the day is spent providing for basic necessities, cooking, washing, child care. Their constant battle against hunger and illness consumes much of life. In this situation of political chaos and economic deprivation women are driven to action and collaboration. They work together because their very survival depends on it, and one example of this has been the making of cuadros.
In the little free time they have, women come together to make these hand sewn pictures that express their lives and the Peruvian reality. The women who make them are drawn by economic need as well as by a desire to show something of their situation. They gather in workshops, or tallers, and in homes. In the tallers the women work together, discuss possible themes, and enjoy and critique each other's work. These places are full of lively conversation; while each woman works on her own piece, ideas and themes are freely shared and borrowed. The workshops, rather than the individuals, develop a style and characteristic manner, though certain conventions persist through most of the cuadros, no matter where they are done: three dimensional figures, size of figures in relation to scene, the combination of appliqué and embroidery. The artists are able to supplement their families' small incomes by selling their work.
The cuadros depict life as it was and as it has become. They are texts which reveal, beneath their brilliant colors and playful exterior, both the intensity and darkness of life in Third World Peru. From religious festivals and processions, harvests and history, the cuadros celebrate traditions and connections to a rich past. But they also present life as the women experience it: strikes and marches, common kitchens and domestic violence, building huts and planting gardens in the desert.
Though they are not intended to be so, the cuadros are heroic texts of courage, solidarity, and survival. Though made individually, they are a collective voice for those who, with skilled hands, infinite patience, and lively imaginations, work to create a future for themselves and their children.
Barbara Cervenka, The University of Michigan School of Art