Tejido isoseño; Sumbi (the woven design vocabulary itself, described by weavers as the true "writing" of the Isoseño people)
A vertical-loom cotton weaving tradition of the Isoseño-Guaraní people along the Parapetí River in Santa Cruz department, in which women weave entirely improvised, unrepeated geometric and figurative designs — no two pieces alike — using two named techniques, moisi and karakarapepo. Weavers describe the designs as "dreamed" rather than planned, a spiritual dimension bound up with the technique's role as an inherited form of cultural memory. Nearly lost to industrial-thread substitution and declining demand, the tradition was organized and revived from 1984 through the CIDAC-supported Asociación de Tejedoras Sumbi Regua, active today in ten of the Isoso region's twenty-two communities.
Risk level: Endangered · Not inscribed; Bolivia is a State Party to the 2003 ICH Convention
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