Las guardianas de las mantas bordadas: secretos y jerarquías en Tinogasta

Abstract

During 2016 I visited Tinogasta, a town west of Catamarca. Like a treasure hunt, I went house to house to find the embroidered blankets characteristic of the area and to meet the artisans. Some of these women keep a blanket revalued with flowers and leaves, folded and kept inside their houses. The artisans are its guardians. Not all show them. Sometimes they sell them. I wonder how and why is the object put into circulation? Why and from whom are they hiding them? Weiner’s reflections on inalienable objects, understood as those that are outside the “give and take” and are a source of difference and hierarchy, motivate us to think about the place occupied by women embroiderers in the social network enabled by circulation of this object through time, of different social and territorial universes.