Traditional Andean dress in the early twenty-first century is a mixture of pre-Hispanic and Spanish colonial styles. Dress still indicates ethnicity, and in Peru use of the chullu (knitted hat with earflaps) by males and montera (Spanish flat-brimmed hat) by females denotes indigenous identity, with variations in the hats indicating the wearer's community. In Bolivia and Ecuador, a variety of hats indicate ethnicity and among three Ecuadorian groups (the Saraguros, Cañars, and Otavalos), and one Bolivian (the Tarabucos), one ethnic marker for males is long hair worn in a braid. The Tarabucos are also known for their unique helmet-like hat (Meisch 1986).
In the Cuzco, Peru, region, males wear the chullu, the poncho, and sometimes handwoven wool pants, or Euro-American style dress, while women are more conservative and wear short jackets and sometimes vests over manufactured blouses and sweaters, and pollera with llikllas, skirts with handwoven belts held shut with a tupu, or safety pin. In many communities, women still pride themselves on their ability to weave fine cloth using pre-Hispanic technology.
In the Ausangate region south Cuzco, such small differences in the women's dress as the length of their pollera and the presence of fringe on their monteras indicates residence (Heckman 2003, pp. 83-84).
In the Corporaque region (southern Peru), the women's dress (vests, hats, gathered skirts), while quite European in form except for their carrying cloths, is elaborately machine-embroidered in small workshops (Femenias 1980, p. 1). Although the technology is European, the importance of dress as an ethnic marker is Andean. Throughout the Bolivian, Peruvian, and Ecuadorian Andes, many indigenous people wear usuta, sandals made from truck tires, but in northern Ecuador, alpargatas, handmade cotton sandals, are worn.
Although Colombia has a small indigenous population, groups in two major highland regions maintain distinctive dress styles. The Kogis (Cágabas) and Incas of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta on the Atlantic coast wear long, cotton belted tunics over tight pants, and a small, round hat, cotton and pointed for the former, flat-topped fiber or cotton for the latter. Men also carry a mochilas, a cotton bag for their coca leaves and lime gourd. Women wear a garment that resembles the aksu, which is wrapped around the body, tied over one shoulder, and fastened at the waist with a belt.
