Recycled paper.

Next to Vilcabamba, the village of San Pedro de Vilcabamba takes visitors to the past, with colorful adobe houses, their big corridors and inner gardens. Town women have organized themselves in order to help improve their life quality. In 1989, wives of the coffee farmers created a pre-association, from where they organize different social and cultural activities, raising funds to face different matters.

Process of elaboration

In 1992, the “Association 23 de Junio” was finally created with the help of some NGO’s. Nowadays they are officially working and able to focus on new projects.

The Tumbaco Peace Group volunteers have invited the members of the association to observe the process of paper recycling, the very same that themselves developed and put on practice. The result is that this recycled paper has gone from small to bigger markets as the ones in Cuenca and Quito. In order to improve the quality of this product, women of this group have taken training course of painting and binding.

The creativity of these women has resulted in a very wide variety of products: notebooks, calendars, post cards, albums, gift bags among others, all of them in different models and colors.

Chamicos

It is beautiful to see how the elder women elaborate the Chamicos –natural tobacco cigarettes. They meet each day in a small colonial house belonging to the association of Vilcabamba’s elders (Asociación de Longevos de Vilcabamba).

Old ladies and their husbands do all the producing process by hand. Men do the hard work- to plant and harvest the tobacco. Once the leaves are dry, women select and prepare them. Some of them grind the leaves while the others fill up the paper rolls, and finally they cut and press the tobacco. The rolls of “chamico” are packed up and then sold in local and national markets, under the brand “Vilcabamba Cigarettes”.

The association has 120 elders, men and women aged between 70 and 100 years old.

Pacha Feria

This Artisan Fair has been created to promote local and foreign handmade products. The fair takes place every second and last Sunday of each month at Vilcabamba Central Park where you will find from necklaces and earrings to wood sculpture, hand made textiles or organic food.