Casa Ecológica, the Sierra family and the Centro de Textiles Tradicionales de Cusco, represent three different approaches to the restoration of Cusco's rich traditional culture within a modern concept of conservation.

The extraordinary tourism-driven dynamism of Cusco today is source of legitimate concern but also of valuable initiatives to rescue and preserve local culture. Many of these initiatives arise not from the commercial imperatives of tourism but end up as part of a modern vision of local culture which attempts to connect to the rest of the world through the value of creation. Today Cusco has a number of bodies dedicated to the rediscovery of the textile traditions of the department, an effort every bit as important as the textiles themselves were in the time of the Incas. The first Spanish Chroniclers wrote that for the inhabitants of the empire their textiles had the same ritual and sacred importance as their precious metals. Thus, with the European invasion imminent, large quantities of beautiful Pieces made from alpaca and vicuña fiber were burned so that they would not fall into the hands of the foreigners.

NILDA, WEAVER
Nilda Callanaupa is a young, energetic woman who learned to weave as a child, like many of the girls in her native Chincheros. Nilda, however quickly realized that the tourist market was affecting the quality of her people's traditional textile. The need to increase production and reduce prices led to the widespread introduction of artificial fibers and chemical dyes that souvenir buyers wanted. In 1996 a group of specialists in Andean textiles, including Nilda, decided to found the Centro de textiles tradicionales de Cusco (CTTC) a not-for-profit organization dedicated to rescuing, raising awareness of and encouraging Andean textiles, as well as providing technical assistance to textile communities. CTTC researches, rescues and documents the art and technology of Cusco textiles, especially that from the communities of Chinchero, Pitumarca, Chahuaytire, Accha alta, Patabamba and Mahuaypata. The results of the CTTC since its creation to the present day are very encouraging. Weavers work only with handspun yarns in wool, llama and alpaca fiber; they also use only natural ingredients for their dyes, such as cochineal, walnut, chillca, molle, che'ecce, kiko and qolle. The CTTC project also aims to raise awareness of the valuable culture generated by traditional textiles. Thus a new textile museum has recently opened, and it is a veritable jewel. On Avenida El Sol, this small museum introduces visitors to the enormous diversity of elements linked to weaving, enriched through the ecological status of the communities, the availability of certain raw materials and the contribution of nature and the cosmovision of each society in the different ancestral iconographies.

AN ECOLOGICAL COMPANY
Casa Ecologica is a new project run as a business and aiming to promote development in Cusqueña communities based on adding value to various natural products, which also include textiles. Casa Ecologica's home area is the basin of the River Mapacho on the south east of the department of Cusco. The project establishes relationships with different communities in order to create market for farm products grown in pure highland conditions. As part of the same concept, traditional textile techniques are promoted so that this tradition con add value and differentiate the products from those made on a large scale. The founders and current partners of Casa Ecologica are Franco Negri, Rafael Casabonne from Lima and Argentine Alejandro Trevisan. The Project sells through an outlet in Cusco, a shop with Inca walls but which faces the main patio of the celebrated Las Arpias mansion on the corner of Calle Triunfo and Palacios the shop sells products from the communities of Mapacho, but also a wide variety of food, cosmetics, sweets and decorative objects, many of them made on Casa Ecologica's workshops in the neighborhood of Huancaro.

MAXI AND THE DOLLS
The second floor of the same mansion, built by the Spanish on an Inca acllahuasi lives a singular couple: Enrique Sierra and Maximiliana Palomino de Sierra. She is the famous Maxi, a talented Cusco artist who belongs to a creative generation dedicated to researching the Cusco culture in order to recreate it by the use of different artisanal techniques. Maxi chose to continue the tradition of her father and grandfathers, a tradition of the imagination: except that she concentrated on making dolls each faithful to the ethnic traits, costumes and certain customs of traditional societies in different parts of Peru. Maxi's inspiration arose from a typical Cusco Christmas festival: Santirantikuy, a fair in Hucaypata at which artisans and community members sell various miniature objects for the crib scenes displayed by Cusco families. Maxi decided that she would also make miniatures, for which she experimented with a technique called t'eque. Afterwards, Enrique Sierra entered Maxi's life and joined her in the same creative obsession in which they have been involved now for more than forty years. The Sierra families have traveled all over Peru, often accompanied by the indefatigable Alfonsina Barrionuevo, and have researched all the ethnological elements that give their dolls the cultural authenticity that has resulted in examples being held in the collections of the Riva Aguero Museum and the Ethnological Museum of Lima. In 1997 Maxi was made a Grand Master of Handicrafts. And there she is, on the second floor of the Las Arpìas mansion with her companion of almost her entire life, Don Enrique: sincere warm and unforgettable.