Though electric machines are now standard, the Venezuelan weaver Margarita Mora has clung to a mix of ancestral Indigenous and Spanish practices to create surprisingly modern work, reported the New York Times. As she sat at her loom on the rooftop of her home in Mucuchies, a town high in the Venezuelan Andes, Margarita Mora, recalled the morning when, at 5, she delivered some wool her mother had spun to a local weaver in nearby Mitivivó. It was her first encounter with the very loom she would use for decades to come. “This loom has made me very happy,” she said during an interview at her home in 2024. “When I learned to weave, I was able to buy my own clothes and shoes.” It was also how she discovered the craft that she has dedicated her life to. All those decades ago, Mitivivó was a remote settlement with just a few families, set where the mountains met the sky. It was here that she began selling her weavings. In most parts of the world, electric machines have replaced ancient weaving techniques, but Mora, who is 91 and tiny, wearing head scarves around her weathered face, has clung to a mix of ancestral Indigenous and Spanish traditions. Her weavings have gained her a modest level of fame in Venezuela. For years, she was an instructor at the Moconoque School of Trade, Arts and Crafts, a nonprofit with the mission of preserving and promoting traditional crafts. In 2008, her face adorned a huge billboard on the facade of a convention center hosting an art exposition in the city of Mérida, southwest of Mucuchies, along with two other weavers and former president Hugo Chávez. She has also received multiple honorary degrees. *Silvia Benedetti for the New York Times
