For years, a question lingered in Alieth Ortiz’s heart: how could children be brought closer to the wisdom of grandmothers? It pained her to see master weavers pass away, taking with them their knowledge of wool weaving—almost without passing it on. The new generations, she observed, seemed uninterested. To her, the root of the problem was clear: children had grown distant from their land. Disconnected from nature, from rural traditions, their eyes fixed only outward. And at the same time, the spinners and weavers were losing motivation. If the craft couldn’t provide a living, if no one valued it, why would anyone keep it alive? Alieth began to wonder about her role in all this. How could she be a bridge between generations? A weaver of knowledge and of networks?

She knew firsthand what it meant to learn from the elders. In the outskirts of Villa de Leyva, it was common for older women living alone to ask young couples to let their daughters stay with them for company. Alieth was one of those little girls. She spent her days with Doña Enriqueta, Doña Rufina, and Doña Elvia, watching them shear sheep, light the firewood stove, forage for wild herbs to make herbal teas, stir their chorote, and spin wool. The spindle was off limits to her—it hung high where she couldn’t reach it. So, as is often the case in the countryside, she learned by watching. She would collect the bits of wool that fell and use a stick to mimic the spinning she’d seen.

Years later, almost without realizing it, she found herself working with the Santa Teresa Foundation in Villa de Leyva. At night, she cared for the elderly. By day, she gave workshops in rural schools. And always, she kept spinning and weaving—out of pure love for the craft. That’s when it all began to make sense, and her initiative “Children and Weaving, the Most Beautiful Tradition of Villa de Leyva” was born. She began taking children into the countryside to sit with grandmothers and learn from them how to shear, card, spin, and weave their own ruanas. In doing so, she wasn’t just helping preserve tradition—she was offering the children lessons in life, helping them understand aging and illness, and even the loneliness many elders endure.

Alieth describes herself as a link between generations, and her love for her land and her craft shines through. As a woman, she has found her role is to unite. She sees weaving as a form of healing and speaks of its benefits with conviction: “My spirit may hold a fear or a feeling I can’t name or see—but I can feel it. When the raw material lets me express it, I release it, and suddenly I can see it outside myself. I can touch it. It’s no longer inside.” That’s why she defends each artisan’s freedom of expression through technique. She draws from memory—her images emerge in the dyed patterns of her weavings. Alieth has also worked to help more women find in wool a way to heal, and also a means to independence. That’s how the Wool Route was born. An experience designed to help craftswomen recognize the true value of their work by sharing it with visitors.

She has done it all grounded in the values of her mother, Myriam, and the adoptive father life gifted her, Jorge. Her mother, a dedicated healer, helped dress and cleanse the bodies of those struck by lightning in the fields. Her father, a generous man, shared bits of his own lunch after laboring in the fields, built beds of hayuelo and eucalyptus branches for Alieth and her brother, and taught them the dignity of life and labor. With her work, she honors them—and the child she once was. That little girl who learned everything from the land and was baffled when she finally entered school at age eight and had to sit at a desk all day, instead of being outside, watching birds build nests, counting calves born in the pasture, or learning math while guarding the sheep so they wouldn’t slip out of the pen. That’s why her classmates used to call her “Alieth of the wild horses”—an artisan who has made her craft not just a way to express what lies within, but a whole system of pedagogy for children, and a source of empowerment for rural women.