La Wounaan indigenous community, a town in the department of Choco, is located in the north of the municipality along the San Juan River, a “resguardo” of the Taparal River.

The community is made up of 900 inhabitants and approximately 150 families. Daily life and the livelihood in the Wounaan community revolves around fishing, in both fresh and salt water; logging and selling wood; agriculture, with cultivation of banana, yucca, corn, and plantain; and, of course, hand-crafted artisan products.
The role of men in the Wounaan community it is mainly working on the land.

Women work on designing and creating the artisan items, and they also help the men take care of the crops.
Their hand-crafted products, renowned for the beauty of their design and colors, created with materials extracted from the jungle, are woven and produced by the hands of the Wounaan women every day.

The designs date back to their ancestors: the vases would be used by the community healer to carry their medicinal plants; the fruit baskets, where the food collected from the fields were kept; plates, where food was served; and the jewelry box, where the Wounaan women kept the jewelry they made in their free time.
The material of these crafts, strong and fine fabric, is extracted from the chunga palm and is sometimes combined with calabash or carob wood, taken from the Chocó jungles.
The colors that bring life to these crafts are orange, coffee brown, green, and black, among others, acquired from chunga palm fiber and the natural process of cooking them with other medicinal plants, such as achiote and puchama.

The pieces are woven in geometric patterns inspired by the areas and landscapes surrounding the Wounaan community. They represent the mountainous jungles, the virgin forests, the crops, rivers, and the trees which are often thirty or forty meters high.

Nowadays, Wounaan families travel to cities to promote their craft products. They maintain the artisanal traditions of their ancestors and, with the sale of their crafts, they aim to provide financial sustenance for their families, and support the economic and educational development of the community.

This article was originally written in English