Abstract

MEDINA ROBALINO, Aylen. Indumentaria indígena: ética, política y diseño. Una mirada sobre el artefacto vestimentario de la mujer chibuleo. Cuad. Cent. Estud. Diseñ. Comun., Ensayos [online]. 2023, n.120, pp.21-41.  Epub July 23, 2023. ISSN 1853-3523.

Clothing, as a design artifact worn by indigenous women during the 1990s, has political inscriptions that transform the social body of these women into a political body, which denounces oppression and demands rights. In this sense, clothing is analyzed, on the one hand, as an interface that communicates the fight for the claim of ethnic rights. And, on the other hand, as a prosthesis that expands the capacities of the body to occupy public space, during the indigenous uprisings that occurred in Ecuador in the 1990s.

That era was decisive regarding indigenous representation in Ecuadorian politics; a process that was similar to that occurring in other Latin American countries. The uprisings and the consolidation of the indigenous social movement record the importance of this group in the history of the construction of the Nation-State. The actions taken by this ethnic minority are based on the constitutional recognition of their rights in the 1998 Magna Carta. In this scenario, indigenous women register their presence through clothing, which they wear in both, public and private spheres. Clothing identifies the town where the women belong; it also endows these people with a collective identity that is strengthened in the daily use of the design artifact.

Identity is re-signified in concomitance with clothing. The Chibuleo women's clothed body, which at first highlights their rural work in the community, is transformed into a political body, whose clothing makes women visible in the urban public space, and with this, the existence of this same people in the framework of the fight and demand for rights of indigenous peoples and nationalities in Ecuador. Clothing constitutes the design artifact with a political imprint, which represents the resignified identity of the people in particular and of ethnic minorities in general.

Keywords : Clothing; indigenous woman; identity; politics; design artifact.

        · abstract in Spanish | Portuguese     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )