Deyci Cabezon of Maje

Wounana weaver Deyci was born in 1982 in the village of Maje, where she still lives today. Her parents came to the Panama village from Colombia, where Wounaan also live. She was raised with a very large family, six sisters and two brothers, which is quite common in the Wounaan connumities. Deyci herself was married quite young, and didn’t have children for quite some time. She now has four children, the oldest is a teenager.

Deyci attended school through sixth grade, the highest educational level taught in the villages. Those who want to continue education will leave for a village out the outskirts of the city where there is more schooling available. But Deyci, like many of the weavers we work with, prefers to live in the village. They prefer to live in the natural setting of the Darien rainforest surrounded by community and nature.

At ten years old Deyci began weaving, taught by watching others weave, along with three of her sisters. She started weaving geometric designs, and still prefers to weave geometrics in black and white today. Her father gathers the palm fronds to supply to his daughter, and she prepares the palms and also dyes them with her own color creations.