Born on the island of Santiago, born in the area of Bastião, Municipality of St.Catarina, António Garcia has been a weaver for several years. Having learned the art of weaving with Sabino Teixeira, who was his Master, António Garcia began producing panaria in 2007. Since May 2021, he has participated in the Voador platform.
Introduced in Cape Verde in the mid-20th century. XV by slaves originating from Guinea, where the weaving tradition has a long history, the so-called land cloth, is a fabric that was traditionally made from cotton on a manual loom, in the form of a long and narrow strip of about 180 cm long and 17 cm wide, with two predominant colors, the white of the cotton and the dark blue, given by the plantIndigofera tinctoria, better known as tintinha, indigo, indigo, anileira, or indigo herb. In Cape Verde, the use of this fabric acquired an important symbolic meaning, being used mainly in funerals and marriage proposal ceremonies, among others, where the presence of the cloths was, and still is, almost mandatory. The production of cloth, which almost disappeared at the end of the 17th century, ended up being recovered, especially after Cape Verde's independence in 1975, with its production remaining present in the archipelago's culture. Today the land cloth is in its own right one of the symbols of Cape Verdean identity.