The Tocuyo Cloth
For more than three centuries, El Tocuyo was one of the great textile cities of South America. Its fabric —a thick and cheap raw cotton cloth— was exported to New Granada, Quito, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Spain, France and England.
Origin
After the founding, Juan Pérez de Tolosa and Juan de Villegas established official looms taking advantage of the cotton from the valley. By 1563, El Tocuyo received the title of "Most Loyal City" and the Crown issued specific ordinances on the quality of the fabric.
The etymology
The chronicler Juan de Arona proposed that "tocuyo" would derive from the Quechua "cuyu", which means "to twist the thread with the hands".
The El Tocuyo–Tunja route
The main commercial route was El Tocuyo → Tunja → Bogotá, from where the cloth was distributed throughout the continent. Other routes reached Argentina, Chile, Spain and northern Europe.
"Tocuyo" as a common noun
The popularity of the fabric was such that the city's name came to generically designate the type of cloth. In 17th and 18th-century Spanish-American Spanish, "a tocuyo" was equivalent to "a rustic cotton cloth". It is still alive today in Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru.