Travel with us to Peru's sweeping Piura Valley where nature and know-how produce cotton so fine it's almost like silk.

Written by Tom Brock
Photography by Michael Yamashita

I became aware of Peruvian pima the first time I touched a shirt made of the stuff. It was a sample our buyer was showing off. I didn't believe cotton could feel so soft. Outside of silk, I couldn't remember such a luxurious shirt. In fact, at first touch I thought it was silk.

When the assignment came up, it had the ring of adventure—travel to a faraway land, talk to cotton growers, pickers, ginners. “Basically Tom, bring back the secret of Peruvian pima," my editor implored. But first I had to get there. Which meant a long flight from home and trading my Wisconsin summer for a South American winter.

Some 16 hours after departing Madison the sharp odor of smog struck me as I de-planed in Lima. It had been a tiring day of travel and I wasn't done. The taxi van I was sharing with photographer Michael Yamashita jostled us along a bumpy boulevard teeming with traffic and people, even at this late hour. Our hotel was still 40 minutes off through this mad jumble of humanity. We needed sleep, because in a few hours we were traveling with our host, Jorge Vereua, 300 kilometers up the coast to the old city of Piura, at the heart of Peru's pima country.

A plant with a past.

Cotton is not new to Peru. It's a "native", having flourished in the wild since time immemorial. Amazing as it sounds, people in the North began to domesticate cotton as a textile fiber 4,500 years ago. Equally surprising is the discovery of El Paraiso, an ancient town on the central coast dating from around 1500 B.C. People raised cotton there too, but for reasons no one expected; rather than weave cloth, they made fishing nets.

Today, apart from its genetic ancestor sea island cotton, which is virtually extinct, Peruvian pima is the longest staple cotton in the world. To spinners and knitters that means ultra-fine yarns for luxurious fabrics. To the farmers who plant it and pick it, Peruvian pima is "suave como el pelo de un angel"—soft as the hair of an angel.



Sunny Piura, incredible pima.

Look on a map and you'll see Piura is a city of 300,000. But it feels smaller. In a matter of a few minutes you leave brick streets behind for the vast openness of the Sechura desert. Piura reminds me of Mexico. Hot, exotic and beautiful. Stucco houses are painted in dozens of soft pastels. Huge deep-green Algarrobo trees lined the boulevards. I see other trees with brilliant flame-red flowers. Swaying palm trees against a clear blue sky. Scores of three-wheeled taxi motorcycles buzz by.

Amidst this barrage of beeping horns and bustling traffic business is conducted in countless market stalls. Everything from fruits to tires to cool drinks is for sale. I see ambulantes, open-air cafes where people cook on fires under sprawling fig trees. The aroma of local specialties like pollo a la parrilla, grilled chicken with spicy mashed potatoes, tempt me.

Our hotel, an old Spanish colonial, is opposite the plaza. Just before twilight people come out to stroll, arm-in-arm. I can hear the squeals of children playing, music on someone's radio. In quieter corners lovers sit holding hands. The pace had slowed. Piura seems peaceful. I savor the moment. My wake up call would come soon enough.

Onward, to the cotton fields

To my surprise Jorge has arranged a quick breakfast. Warm bread, thick coffee, papaya juice. Nobody says much. We're groggy, half asleep. It's still as much night as it is day. But push off we must because the cotton pickers start early. And Michael needs the fleeting morning light for the best pictures.

Piura's swept streets are deserted at this hour. On our way through town we pass one or two souls off to work of their own. Now and then the stillness is shattered by the loud, repeated call of Chillalo birds flapping over our heads. The slight scent of coal smoke seeps in the truck window. At a 24-hour gas station the dutiful attendant sits huddled in his blanket. "Otra noche fría," "another cold night," he says to Jorge while he fills the tank. The temperature is 55 degrees perhaps, almost warm by Wisconsin standards. But Jorge's jacket is zipped-up tight, another reminder that it's the middle of winter for Peruvians.

Dawn will break in an hour and Michael is getting antsy. Somewhere on the way out of town we've taken a wrong turn. We find a lone truck driver who sets us on course for the cotton fields. Piura's lights and the paved highway vanish behind us. It's pitch black under a starless sky. My eyes look to the end of the headlights. Shadows make potholes loom like craters. Jorge has to wrestle the wheel to avoid them. We laugh. I'm bouncing on the seat every which way, loving every minute of it.

Entering a village I hear a rooster crow. I see a dozen small adobe homes with tidy plots of beans and squash, most with a light on inside. People are up, preparing for their day. A shirtless man is bent over, splashing his face from a spigot in front of his house. We pass boys on donkey carts hauling water from a community well. Sleepy mongrel dogs move out of our way.

Getting closer to the source

Minutes before daybreak we pull up to the red brick walls of the local ginning mill. Men smaller than me squat outside, waiting for the mammoth steel gate to open. A few women wrapped in brightly dyed shawls display some kind of traditional Indian beverage for sale. It's quiet, not much talking. The air still cool. We've stopped here to get directions to "dia de campo", the field of the day.

Mill administrator Javier Trelles sends along one of the men to guide us. "You'll never find the way", he warns mildly. I see why. The road cuts every which way. It's more of a trail really. We can't tell what's around the next bend, our view obscured by tall narrow-leafed plants that remind me of cattails The truck's tires spin in the sand. Then suddenly, white-flecked cotton fields!

We have been skirting irrigation ditches, lush with water-loving vegetation. But now, in the open, I see cotton fields in every direction, broken only by greenery along other ditches, and trees in distant clumps which I take to be villages. This is Peru's legendary Piura valley along her north coast, smack dab between the Andes and Pacific, and home to some of the richest cotton country in the world.

Soon the fields fill with people

The pickers are just arriving, about 30 men and women for this section of field, most in a tractor-drawn wagon, others on foot. At first, Michael's picture-taking elicits self-conscious laughter. But after a few minutes everyone is back to business, ready to go. Split into twos and threes, they start at the edge of the field, then begin to work their way down the rows. The morning air is damp, muffling voices. Yet I can hear the soft murmur of familial Spanish, broken now and again by shouts and laughter.

The pickers' hands move smoothly, left-right, left-right, until a fistful of puffy cotton fills each one. Then a quick reach around back to stuff the canvas bag, tied at the waist, dragging behind. They tell me the first harvest is best because the plants are very full then, sometimes bending over from their own weight. The plants are taller than I expected, close to six feet. In short order the pickers disappear into a sea of green. All I can see are their bobbing red caps.

For cotton this fine the old way is best.

Instead of a single mechanized harvest as done elsewhere, Peruvian pima is handpicked not just once, but three times a season, as it ripens. If the cotton isn't ready, it's left on the plant. This was apparent as I watched two pickers skip some bolls, while reaching instead for others so ripe it looks like their fluffy fruit was about to drop to the ground.

Immature, or "green" cotton, is harsh by comparison and doesn't take dye well. Ginners and spinners prefer handpicked pima because there's virtually no "trash", the bits of leaves machines pick up. Some experts I talked with said Peruvian pima fibers are so fine they can tangle in modern harvesters.

A long day, a bountiful crop.

A tanned, tall and distinguished looking man with a shock of gray hair, Señor Trelles explaines how each campesino (farmer) trucks his own crop to the mill the day it's picked.

He led us to a colca, a giant-sized room where cotton is stored before ginning. Young men, wearing only shirts and shorts, are hoisting 100 lb. bags from Teo Fialo's old Toyota, then up a ramp into the colca where they were emptied. I look inside with slack-jawed wonder. Before me stands a mountain of pima packed 20 ft. high. I want to jump in.

I ask Señor Fialo, who farms four hectares and has worked the crop for 45 years what's the secret of Peruvian pima. What makes it so soft. "It's our soil and climate", he tells me simply.

Others I had spoken with agreed. The hot equatorial sun, Peru's fertile coastal plain, arid climate and thousands of years of cotton know-how all combine to make Peruvian pima like no other.

Seeing me marvel at the freshly plucked pima I hold between my fingers, Señor Fialo says proudly, "El mejor del mundo"... the softest in the world. After everything I had seen, I believe it too.*

The End.

* Editor's note:

This story was originally published in the February, 1996 issue of the Lands' End catalog. Producers of American-grown Supima® cotton might disagree with Señor Fialo's claim – and author Tom Brock's reporting – that Peruvian pima is the softest in the world. Let us know what you think. Send an e-mail to talkback@landsend.com.