Entretejidos ye’kuana: oralidad, mito, artesanía

Abstract

This article explores indigenous art-crafts of the Ye’kuana society of the Venezuelan Amazon. In particular, it focuses on its basketry: its mythical meaning as well as its importance as a mediator with the criollo or Westernized world. We aim to show how these oral traditions and their visual languages have permeated their myths and bodies of ancestral knowledge over time and resisted abrupt changes, such as their contact with the European or “Western” world. In this way, we contrast the valuation of their craftwork by the criollo or Westernized market with the value given to it by the cultures which produce them. This study shows the extent to which oral cultures are capable of shaping and adapting themselves to new contingencies and sociocultural exigencies, without losing their ancestral knowledge.

Keywords

• Thesaurus: handicraft
• basketry
• myth. Author´s keywords: indigenous art-crafts
• Ye’kuana
• oral culture