Her laughter echoes all throughout Fúquene. Flor Alba Briceño lives for and thanks to the lagoon. She understands it, walks around it, caresses its waters. She knows when she can harvest its reeds because she asks for permission, just as every member of her family has always done. She has a distant memory of her great-grandmother Cristo, her grandmother Ángela, and her parents sitting on the floor and weaving the mats they sold for a living. They affectionately called her gurrioncita. At the age of eight, she was already riding on the boat, and learning both to cut bundles of reeds through waist-deep water, and to make beautiful baskets, mats, and containers that shone like ears of wheat.

She has mastered her technique and has developed a keen eye to identify when the raw material is dry enough to start braiding or weaving. Despite all of this, she never refuses to take a course and is always thirsty for knowledge. This has allowed her to become one of the most skilled craftswomen in the region. She is demanding like few others because, in the past, she has had to make over many of the wears she has crafted to have them reach her strict standards. Baskets drove her crazy at the beginning because they always turned out deformed. Nowadays, however, she cannot help but laugh at her rookie mistakes.

She now knows perfectly well how valuable her work is. She has even collaborated with the designers who gave her products the Lápiz de Oro (Golden Pencil) award. She is as adorable as she is tough and relentless, which is why she is grateful for her life and the rewards it has given her. She has been able, for instance, to leave the country from time to time to proudly sell her products, which are born from the mastery of her craft.

She has partnered up with her son-in-law, Agustín, and her grandson is following in her footsteps. She is outspoken about the environmental deterioration that the lagoon —the very source of her life— has been experiencing the past few years. She has witnessed how it has been losing vitality: how this body of water, which is essential for the region, has been drying up.

Nevertheless, she lives for and thanks to it, and she will continue to take good care of it. We can do so as well by purchasing and making use of her wares, for this is the best way to keep her regional tradition alive.