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Miriam is a young woman, age 21. She is single, without children, and her business is weaving vicuña shawls.
She battles poverty and inequality daily, and when a solution can no longer be found, she begins to pray for fortitude. She carries out her business in the zone, "cruce villa Adela", where the crossroads leading to remote villages on the Altiplano are found.
Miriam has a tender and charming expression. Every word or phrase that she utters is like a poem of grace and friendship, because her maternal tongue is Aymara, which she practices with family members, speaking Spanish for daily life. She lives in her parents' house, which they own. It is built of adobe and has potable water, electricity, and a sewer system. Her business is weaving shawls, an occupation that she learned from her mother. The shawls that she makes are designed in the style of the paceña woman [from La Paz]. She uses vicuña wool and a loom to carry out her work, which is in the "aguayo" [traditional Andean] style. The woven shawls have vicuña macrame borders, and she decorates them with rosettes, to denote the Andean flowers. She says, "I like working in my house because my loom is here. . ."
Her business is successful because garments made of vicuña wool are in great demand. The advantage of her business is that she works at home, and the disadvantage is the lack of wool. Her dream is to open her own shop. She wants to purchase vicuña wool at wholesale. This is her first loan cycle with the institution in the one year that she has been doing this work.
For these reasons, Miriam is requesting a loan to purchase wholesale vicuña wool to hand weave garments.
Translated from Spanish by Kiva volunteer anonymized. View original language description.
