ORIGIN

The South Andean Coordinator of Handicrafts, COSART, was created more than 25 years ago, in 1978, starting from principles of social politics that correspond to andean traditional values mainly those of reciprocity, responsibility, and those of collective work based on solidarity (the Ayni and the Minka respectively, based on principles of solidarity), and with strong convictions in favour of the autonomy of the producers and against the asistencialism.

The project began in the high provinces of Cusco, Espinar, Canas, Sicuani, working with isolated and impoverished rural communities where some livestock is raised, with very poor cultivation lands, that scarcely produce more than "bitter potato", scarce tubers and cereals, insufficient to balance an elementary diet.

Importance of the craft for the rural communities

In these areas, COSART dedicated its work to harness local strengths, particularly the traditional handling of the fibers of llamas, alpacas and ovines for the elaboration of traditional fabrics for the family use and for the traditional utilitarian exchange on the local markets.
Therefore COSART opted to get specialized in the topic of the handicraft considered by most producers as a privileged mean; revaluing and adapting designs, tools, material etc., so that they can reach optimal levels to execute common production projects, commercialization and life projects successfully. To learn how to carry out common projects also teaches to overcome difficulties that the producers confront daily in their difficult environment.
On the other hand the handicraft has the particularity of concentrating in itself an important cultural expression as well as cultural legacies, for what it is intimately bound to the affirmation, recovery and experience of the identity and, as a consequence, to the personal and collective self-esteem.
COSART accompanied these communities, with strong emphasis on the organizational dimension, and made the producers reach good qualities of products and more especially interesting and higher prices bypassing gradually several middlemen. As a consequence, starting from the committees conformed in the communities, local markets were influenced as far as diversification of products and increment of the prices are concerned.