Chinchero Textiles: Weaving, Alpaca Fibre and Andean Knowledge in Peru

On a high, rolling plain north-west of Cusco, at more than 3,700 metres, the town of Chinchero looks out over patchwork fields towards snow-capped peaks. It has an Inca royal estate, a colonial church built on Inca walls, and a busy Sunday market, but it is best known for something made by hand: woven cloth. Weaving in Chinchero, Peru, is not a souvenir craft preserved for visitors. It is a body of knowledge, of fibre, colour, pattern and technique, that weavers there have worked hard to keep and to revive. On Day 7 of our South American Small Group History and Culture Tour, the group stops at Chinchero on the way from Cusco into the Sacred Valley.

Why Chinchero sits within the Sacred Valley story

Chinchero lies on the road between Cusco and Urubamba, on the plateau above the Sacred Valley. In the late fifteenth century the Inca ruler Topa Inca Yupanqui made it a royal estate. According to Cusco’s regional culture office, around 1480 he ordered the building of a palace, shrines, baths and the great sweeping agricultural terraces that still curve below the town. Fine Inca stonework, including a long wall of trapezoidal niches, frames the main square.

After the Spanish conquest, a church was raised on the Inca foundations. Now dedicated to Nuestra Señora de la Natividad and traditionally dated to 1607, it has painted ceilings in which Catholic saints share space with floral and Andean motifs. Peru declared Chinchero’s monumental zone part of the national heritage in 1972 and again, as Cultural Heritage of the Nation, in 2002.

Chinchero is also a working town of around 10,000 people, facing very modern pressures. On the plateau nearby, a new international airport for Cusco has been under construction since 2019, with opening forecast for late 2027 or 2028. UNESCO and the World Monuments Fund have both raised concerns about its impact on the landscape and heritage of the Sacred Valley. The town’s textiles belong to that present-day story, not to a museum.

Fibre: from fleece to yarn

Andean cloth begins with animals. In Inca times highland textiles were made mainly from the fibre of llamas, alpacas and vicuñas; vicuña wool was so prized that only the Inca ruler could own the herds. Today Chinchero weavers work chiefly with alpaca and sheep’s wool. Vicuña, still the finest Andean fibre, is now far too costly for everyday weaving.

Preparing the fibre is slow work. Fleece is washed using the grated root of a plant called saqta, which lathers like soap in warm water. It is then spun by hand on a drop spindle, the pushka, and plied into a strong, even yarn. One account of Chinchero weaving estimates that spinning and plying alone take around 60 percent of the time that goes into a finished piece, which is why hand-spun yarn is the first thing an experienced eye looks for.

Colour: the return of natural dyes

Andean dyers have long known how to draw strong, lasting colour from local materials. Cochineal, a dye made from an insect, gives reds and was among the most important dyes of the ancient Andes. Plants and lichens supply other colours: ch’illca for greens, the flowers of q’olle for yellows, and indigo for blue. Lime juice, salt and a mineral mordant called collpa shift and fix the shades.

In Chinchero, as in much of the Andes, the twentieth century brought cheap synthetic dyes, and some natural colours were lost entirely; with natural indigo gone, weavers used black where blue had once been. From the 1990s, Chinchero weavers revived the old dyes, and indigo, cochineal red and ch’illca green are used again. Synthetic yarns remain popular because they are quicker, and both now coexist.

The loom and the weave

Chinchero weavers work on the backstrap loom, one end of the warp tied to a fixed post and the other to a strap around the weaver’s waist, so that the weaver’s own body controls the tension. The town’s signature technique is complementary warp-faced weaving, which produces a densely patterned, two-sided cloth. In the twentieth century weavers there also adopted a one-sided supplementary-warp technique.

Many pieces are finished with a distinctive tubular border called ñawi awapa, woven and sewn to the edge in a single operation. The name means “eye border”, and it is believed to give the cloth spiritual protection. The best-known garment is the lliklla, a shawl or mantle that combines plain-woven bands with patterned ones, alongside belts, ponchos and narrow ribbons.

Pattern, memory and Andean knowledge

In the Inca state, cloth was one of the most valuable things a person could own. The finest cloth, cumbi, was made by specialist weavers, women chosen to live and work in dedicated houses and men known as qumpicamayoc. The state controlled who could make it and who could wear it. Cloth was paid as tax, given to soldiers, exchanged as a diplomatic gift and burned as an offering. Inca tunics carried coded geometric designs called tocapu. Our article on the Qoricancha, the Inca temple of the Sun in Cusco, describes the religious world in which such cloth was offered.

Chinchero’s patterns belong to a living tradition rather than a simple continuation of Inca designs, but they carry their own knowledge. The main motif is the luraypu, and other named designs include the rose, the hummingbird and the puma’s claw, along with lines read as terraces and rivers, and stars or sunlight on water. Weavers learn them by memory and practice.

Revival and the weavers of Chinchero

By the late twentieth century many of these skills were at risk. Chinchero weavers led the response. A local association had been working to revive ancestral designs for decades, and in 1996 weavers from the town, led by Nilda Callañaupa Alvarez, founded the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco. It now works with ten weaving communities in the Cusco region, teaches children as well as adults, runs a museum in Cusco, and has held international gatherings of weavers. Callañaupa’s books, including Weaving in the Peruvian Highlands and Textile Traditions of Chinchero, record the techniques in detail.

In Chinchero, weaving associations hold demonstrations that take visitors through the whole process: washing the fleece, spinning, natural dyeing, setting up the warp, weaving and finishing the border.

How can visitors approach a living tradition respectfully?

By treating weavers as experts rather than as picturesque figures. Ask about materials and technique, listen to how the weavers describe their own work, and ask permission before photographing people. When buying, recognise that a hand-spun, naturally dyed, backstrap-woven piece represents long hours of skilled work, and that the price reflects that. Machine-made textiles sold in markets are cheaper but are not the same thing.

How can you tell a handwoven textile from a machine-made one?

Look for small variations. Weavers point out that machine-made cloth lacks the slight irregularities of hand-spun yarn and handwoven pattern, while a handwoven piece is dense, firm and, in Chinchero’s complementary-warp weaving, patterned on both sides. Above all, ask: weavers selling their own work will explain how a piece was made, from fleece to finished border.

Will the altitude at Chinchero affect you?

It may. Chinchero is the first highland stop after the Amazon, at more than 3,700 metres. Walk slowly and drink plenty of water. On the tour the group continues to its hotel in the Sacred Valley afterwards, with time to rest and begin acclimatising to the altitude.

Chinchero on the route from the Amazon to Cusco

Chinchero marks a turning point in the journey. The group flies from the rainforest of the Madre de Dios to Cusco and, rather than staying in the city straight away, drives up onto the plateau and down into the Sacred Valley. The next day continues to the markets of Pisac and to Ollantaytambo, the Inca town and fortress that guarded the valley, before the train to Machu Picchu and several days in Cusco itself.

Seen in that sequence, Chinchero’s textiles are a reminder that Inca and Andean civilisation was not only stone and terraces, but also a deep knowledge of materials passed from one generation to the next. Our overview of the South America cultural tour route shows how Chinchero fits the wider journey. On the South American Small Group History and Culture Tour, a Program Leader and local guides bring that story together for a small group of up to 16 travellers.