The meeting with the Huilos Patacancha community has been crucial for Ayud’Art involvement in Ethical business.
A turning point, an upheaval, an awareness.
First, the path that leads to the community, two hours driving without a shop or a hospital, this remoteness gets you closer to your consciousness and makes you strong and fragile at the same time.
Then, by meeting the community, discovering the Quechua language, the purity of gestures and the strength of traditions.
It was not just about craft making. Suddenly, these 96 persons, became the ambassadors of a people, throughout history who suffered from violence, who were weakened and threatened by modernity.
Huiloc culture enriches us with its beauty and truth. It is based on an equal dignity conviction, far from the stereotypes of the “savage” or the “primitive”.
Far from any voyeurism, Ayud’Art decided to photograph and film Huiloc, in order to make the distinguishable value of these different cultures, sometimes hidden, often threatened, “the fragile flowers of the diversity”. Doing this was suddenly also carrying an important message, the refusal of ethnocentrism. Refusing entirely this fake evolutionism which pretends that some people would be frozen in a past without following the path of evolutionism. Refusing entirely that these so called “primitive” cultures can only be considered as a subject for an ethnography. The members of the Huiloc community are carrying an ancestral wisdom, a refined imaginary composed with wonderful myth, high artistic expressions which are on the same footing as the most beautiful western artistic creations.
Being in contact with the Huiloc community and offering a place to sell its products on Ayud’Art stand is something more than only trading. It mixes up differences, it links people and it emphasizes the otherness.
While western people are looking for sustainable development, seeing these women and these men dealing with natural resources to heal them, convinced Ayud’Art in engaging itself in ethical business.
Since we believe that this diversity is a treasure that we should really preserve, we are proud and happy to introduce you to the Huiloc community.