Skip to main content
← STORIED OBJECTS / Sisal Production Model
A tableau of hand-carved and painted wood figures engaged in work activities related to making rope is arranged on a painted plywood surface. Four men, one woman, one donkey, a machine, and racks holding the fiber are included.

Photo by Zvonimir Bebek, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

Image Description A scene of painted, carved wood figures and tools engaged in harvesting and processing the sisal plant to make rope is set out on a two-foot-long piece of painted plywood. The group of four men, one woman, and a donkey are engaged in gathering, processing, and drying the raw material. A plant-crushing machine stands in the center. The workers are dark-skinned and wear simple work clothes carved and painted onto their bodies. Three of the men wear hats. A woman in a dark green dress stands with her hands on a rack of drying rope fibers. The processing machine is behind her. On her left, we see the back of a man in a white shirt carrying a shovel and walking toward a scale. A man in a blue shirt and apron stands between the scale and machine, pulling out lengths of shredded fibers. Adjacent to him, a man approaches the machine carrying a bundle of plant leaves. The fourth man, wearing a red shirt, stoops behind a partially harvested plant, cutting off leaves. The donkey stands on the other side of the plant, saddled with a frame pack partially loaded with rope fiber.

Sisal Production Model

This tableau of work features hand-carved figures engaged in the process of harvesting and crushing agave into sisal fibers for rope. A big cash crop, sisal is often referred to as “green gold” in Bahia, Brazil. Its place in Bahia’s rural economy was a focus of the 1994 Culture and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean Festival program.
  • Sisal production area at the 1994 Festival site.
    Photo by Jeff Tinsley, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

Struggle and sisal in the sertão in Brazil

The participants who brought this model to the Folklife Festival were members of APAEB, an association of farmers who banded together to manage and market sisal themselves—without middlemen or private industries—in 1980. They came from the semi-arid sertão region of Bahia in northeast Brazil and carried with them a long history of struggle. A mix of African, Portuguese, and Indigenous descent, sertanejos live in one of the most drought-ridden areas of Latin America. When not compelled to migrate for subsistence, sisal production has dominated the local economy since APAEB was formed.

Over time, the association has expanded into a sustainable grassroots organization that collects, transports, processes, and markets sisal products internationally. It also supports expressive traditions like storytelling, songwriting, and the type of narrative sculpture seen here. Program participants brought several similar models to use as visual aids when talking with visitors about the multiple steps involved in converting the tough agave plant into raw, pliable sisal, which is eventually transformed into rope.

Gallery
  • Photos by Zvonimir Bebek, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives

As a broader category of narrative art, figurative tableaux produced in Brazil depict scenes from everyday life—historical events, games or amusements, lifecycle events, or, in this case, a distinctive regional industry. At the close of the Festival, representatives from APAEB presented this model as a gift, with a dated plaque. Nearly thirty years later, the association is still going strong and continues to diversify—growing from producing and selling sisal in bulk to creating finished products such as rugs and bags sold throughout the world.

—Olivia Cadaval, program curator
Support the Folklife Festival, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, sustainability projects, educational outreach, and more.
Support Folklife. Donate Now.

.