Weaving Chiapas: Maya Women's Lives in a Changing World

by Yolanda Castro Apreza (Editor), Charlene Woodcock (Editor), K'inal Antsetik, A.C. (Editor), Leire Gutierrez (Translator), Charlene Woodcock (Translator)

Overview

In the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, a large indigenous population lives in rural communities, many of which retain traditional forms of governance. In 1996, some 350 women of these communities formed a weavers’ cooperative, which they called Jolom Mayaetik. Their goal was to join together to market textiles of high quality in both new and ancient designs. Weaving Chiapas offers a rare view of the daily lives, memories, and hopes of these rural Maya women as they strive to retain their ancient customs while adapting to a rapidly changing world.

Originally published in Spanish in 2007, this book captures firsthand the voices of these Maya artisans, whose experiences, including the challenges of living in a highly patriarchal culture, often escape the attention of mainstream scholarship. Based on interviews conducted with members of the Jolom Mayaetik cooperative, the accounts gathered in this volume provide an intimate view of women’s life in the Chiapas highlands, known locally as Los Altos. We learn about their experiences of childhood, marriage, and childbirth; about subsistence farming and food traditions; and about the particular styles of clothing and even hairstyles that vary from community to community. Restricted by custom from engaging in public occupations, Los Altos women are responsible for managing their households and caring for domestic animals. But many of them long for broader opportunities, and the Jolom Mayaetik cooperative represents a bold effort by its members to assume control over and build a wider market for their own work.

This English-language edition features color photographs—published here for the first time—depicting many of the individual women and their stunning textiles. A new preface, chapter introductions, and a scholarly afterword frame the women’s narratives and place their accounts within cultural and historical context.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806159836
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	02/08/2018
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Yolanda Castro Apreza is a cofounder, along with Micaela Hernández Meza, of K’inal Antsetik, A.C.


Charlene M. Woodcock is retired as an acquisitions editor at the University of California Press and has been a volunteer with the Jolom Mayaetik weavers’ cooperative since 2000.


K’inal Antsetik, A.C., a Mexican nonprofit organization that supports economic self-help projects throughout Chiapas, facilitated the Spanish edition of this volume.
 


Charlene M. Woodcock is retired as an acquisitions editor at the University of California Press and has been a volunteer with the Jolom Mayaetik weavers’ cooperative since 2000.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

A Woman's Life, from Childhood to Marriage

These are the memories and stories of women born into traditional Maya families in the highlands (Los Altos) of Chiapas between the 1930s and 1980s, where a large indigenous population lives in rural, essentially self-governing communities within the larger municipio, or county organization. The communities have to a large extent preserved their indigenous languages and cultural traditions, subsistence farming practices, food traditions, and particular styles of clothing, which vary from community to community. Styles of dress, and even hairstyles, identify members of specific communities. Many families continue to cultivate their milpas (small agricultural plots), where they grow corn, other vegetables, and coffee for their own use and to sell. Men who do not have land of their own for coffee cultivation work on other peasant- owned land or on lowland plantations, or do construction work. By custom, the women are responsible for managing the home and caring for domestic animals and have been restricted from more public occupations. Children are expected to work from an early age. Girls take care of younger siblings to free their mothers to fulfill their other responsibilities. The past thirty years have seen an evolution from a barter to a cash-based economy, which has made finances more difficult for most families. The communities carry on traditions of civic responsibilities, restricted to men, but while women are responsible for decorating the church or caring for the school, some would like the opportunity to take on broader civic obligations.

In this chapter the women look back upon their childhoods — a carefree time for some, even though they were expected to help their mothers. As with children anywhere whose families live close to the land, the pleasures of childhood play soon give way to an obligation to participate in family chores, care for siblings while parents work, and take care of domestic animals. Nonetheless, there is a freshness to these memories of early childhood play, before the burdens of household tasks — learning to cook or helping parents take produce to the market — begin to push them into adult responsibilities.

The memories of some women darken as they recall the sometimes unwelcome, premature expectation that they marry. Traditionally, the parents arranged the marriage after the suitor visited them with a request to marry their daughter. If the parents were receptive, the arrangement was sealed with a gift of alcohol. More recently, however, recognition of the damage done by excessive drinking has encouraged the substitution of soft drinks for alcohol in this and other traditions. After the wedding the young woman went to live with her husband and his family, and was subject to his parents' wishes. These customs are changing, so the difficulties and conditions some of the women interviewed here faced as newlyweds would be diminished for young women marrying today.

In the section on childbirth, note that several participants in the discussion live in the Tzeltal community of Yochib, where there is a partero (male midwife). In most communities the midwives are female.

OUR GAMES

We can't remember the games we used to play very well; it was a long time ago and we can't really remember and tell.

Pascuala Díaz, Bayalemó

I remember playing in the milpa behind the bean bushes, hiding myself. I used to play the whole day. We didn't have a name for the games. I liked climbing the trees. I was around eight years old.

Francisca Pérez, Chichelalhó

I used to carry a dog instead of a doll. I pretended he was my baby and I nursed him. Nursed the dog! My mom told me not to carry the dog, but I didn't obey. I remember that my mother used to buy flour and I liked eating it. She got angry and that's why I played in secret. Once, I hid myself in the grass and I started eating it [flour]. But it wasn't flour, it was lime instead! [Laughter] I ate lime! I thought I was going to die because my tongue was numb, and because I was really afraid, I had to tell my mom.

Antonia Hernández, Bayalemó

When I was eight years old, I used to cut the leaves from the trees to make tortillas. My friends and I boiled the leaves and pretended that was our meal. Sometimes the game ended up with anger or blows. My mother wanted me to include my little brother, but I used to get bored soon, and I left him on the ground and ran off so that my mom wouldn't notice. After doing that, it was hard going back home because I knew what I did was wrong.

Rosa González, Jolxic

When I was a little girl I used to play all the time, and I made my dolls and gave them hair of corn silk. I also used to make toys during the harvest. My mother taught me. I had a little machete and I used to play with it. I built myself a little house and because I saw that my mom had a metate [grinding bowl] I also wanted one. I played with my machete. But I cut myself with it; here are my scars.

Pascuala Patishtán, Bautista Chico

When I was a child, my mother suffered because she had to look after me and carry me, so I kept her from her work. When I got bigger I started to play. My mom collected corncobs to make our toys.

When I was older I played with my little brothers while my mother did her work. When my sister went out with the sheep she used to invite me to play, but I used to say, "Help me prepare the wool before we play," and she helped me. When we finished our work, we began to play, or we sat in the hills.

María Gómez, Yochib

When we were little girls we didn't leave our mothers. We couldn't walk yet and we were being breastfed. When we got bigger the main thing we did was play, even though our mother told us to bring some wood or water to the house. We didn't obey, we just played. That's why we used to get beaten sometimes, but we didn't feel the blows much because we loved playing.

Juana Jiménez, Bautista Chico

I liked to play. I made my toys; I looked for leaves to make tortillas, I used to make my dolls. But my mother used to get angry because I didn't help her; then she slapped me and said, "That's the way you feed yourself? You can't feed yourself with that!" I remember well.

While my mother did her work, during harvest time, we used to collect the cobs to turn them into dolls, and we used the corn silk for the dolls' hair. We also collected bottle tops and we pressed them into leaves to make tortillas, it makes them really round. With the leaves of a tree called chijilte' [Mexican elder] we made dresses for the dolls.

Adela López, Bayalemó

When I was a little girl, I used to steal the hens' eggs before my mother collected them. I ate them raw and my mom used to say, "This hen is no good, it never lays eggs."

WORK AT HOME

I stopped playing little by little. ... "We have to weave and work. If you just play we earn nothing!" my mother used to say.

Francisca Pérez, Chichelalhó

I think it wasn't until I was twelve years old that I started doing some work. I stripped kernels of the corn from the milpa and I looked after my little brothers. I remember that I used to go with my mother to the milpa to take home the vegetables, corn, and beans. Sometimes our mothers told us to grind the corn or to make tortillas, and if we didn't obey they wouldn't feed us. We would say to them, "I don't care, I can stand the hunger. I can live from air or from my spirit" [laughter], and my mother answered us, "We will see if that's true, but don't come tomorrow asking for food."

Rosa González, Jolxic

I stopped playing little by little. I suffered because I didn't have a father to support me. My mother had to work in the milpa and she also wove things to sell to the san pedranos [indigenous people from San Pedro, Chenalhó].

I grew up hungry. We suffered a lot; we used to eat two or three tortillas. My mother was the one who endured the most hunger. "We have to weave and work. If you just play we earn nothing!" my mother used to say. She asked me if I had prepared the wool, and if I hadn't, she beat me. Then I was afraid, but the next day I tried harder so that I could play.

When I came home with the work finished, my mother was satisfied. As I grew older, my mom told me to carry water and to grind corn. Then, we didn't use the hand grinder but the metate. My mother bought me a little metate, but I didn't know how to use it so I had to grind the corn twice. "Why can't you grind the corn? Do it carefully, pay attention to your metate; we're not going to throw away the corn, it is not shit!"

When I finished, I couldn't lift the metate because it was too heavy. The metate gave me blisters in my hands, I wanted to cry.

Then my mother told me I should learn how to make tortillas. My sister and I went to look for banana leaves; with the banana leaves we made tortillas. We stored them, but the next day they were rotten. I don't know whether nylon bags existed or not, but we used banana leaves. That's how we made tortillas.

"Don't get used to that. When you get married you are not going to use banana leaves; aren't you embarrassed?" my mom said to me. I didn't know how to make tortillas, I suffered a lot growing up. My dad had died; so we went to Chenalhó to sell fruits and vegetables. We carried limes and oranges, they weighed a lot and we couldn't sell them. We offered six or eight for five cents, but we earned almost nothing. That's how I grew up and left my childhood behind.

Pascuala Patishtán, Bautista Chico

When I was older, my mother taught me how to work. She taught me to prepare the wool, and I used to carry it in a basket as my mom told me. "You have to have everything ready, I don't want you to play."

I went out with the sheep; I took them to graze, and when I came back my mother asked me if I had finished my work. I told her that I had, then she checked it. That way, there were no slaps or scoldings.

I have a sister who didn't like weaving very much, so she buried her work under the grass or in the ground. When my brothers went to work the land, they found her work buried and beat her. In my case, they didn't beat me for my work.

I used to look after my little brothers so that my mother could work.

As I grew up my mother told me I had to start working, but I didn't want to work. I just wanted to play. She told me that I had to learn to take care of myself and to make my clothes. She wouldn't always do it for me. "I won't always be living with you; you'll grow up and you will have to make your own clothes. If I die, who will make your clothes?" That's what she said to me; she always urged me to learn how to work.

Juana Jiménez, Bautista Chico

When I was a little girl my mother sent me for water. One time I dropped the jug when I was going for water. When I came back home with the broken jug I tried to hide it, but my mom realized and asked me what I had done. I didn't answer because I was afraid that she would scold me.

She didn't beat me, she only scolded me. She was angry when she realized that I wasn't carrying any water. There was nothing to drink and she said to me, "Why did you break the pitcher? Don't you see that we have no money to buy another one?"

I was eight or nine years old [then]. When I was twelve I was still afraid of carrying the pitcher.

When I was seven years old, my job was to carry the water and wood. I don't remember doing anything else. My dad died when I was very young. Maybe he scolded me sometimes, but I can't remember. I grew up with my mother. With her we went for wood, she cut the branches and we carried the wood.

María López, Oventik Grande

By the time I was five years old my mother already made me cook beans and do housework. If I didn't obey, she beat me with a stick and she didn't let me play. When my mother went to the market, I used to go with her to carry the children because we couldn't leave them alone at home. Later, I went to the market with my parents to carry the things they had bought.

THE TEACHINGS OF OUR PARENTS

How are you going to take care of your husband if you don't know how to cook and you burn the beans?

Francisca Pérez, Chichelalhó

When things didn't turn out well, my mother used to get upset and scold me — for example, when the beans burned. My mother and my grandmother told me not to have tangled, untidy hair but I didn't obey. I wouldn't let them check my hair for lice. I used to get angry and run away so that I couldn't hear them, and I said, "¡Ah, it's because they are already old women!" Sometimes we fought with our brothers or sisters. We said to them: "Why do you take my clothes when you already have your own?" or we would complain about [those things] to our parents. "Why do you only buy clothes for her if I'm also your daughter?" That's why we complained: because they bought more for some daughters than for others. We also fought during meals because one of us ate more tortillas or corn than the rest, so we started fighting and saying, "I was the one who went to the milpa and carried the corncobs; you didn't want to carry them, that's why I can eat the tender corn!" What we did with the ones who didn't want to carry the corn was we left them the old corn that wasn't sweet, and we did the same with the pozol [drink made from cocoa and corn, dating from prehistoric times]. We said, "I can eat more than you because I was grinding for everyone. Besides, I woke up early to make the tortillas so I can eat more than the others."

Another thing, we didn't want to wash our clothes, because we also had to wash the clothes of the little ones. So we didn't obey and our mother used to say, "Those who don't want to wash their clothes will be naked or dirty. Won't you be embarrassed?"

Marcela López, Bayalemó

My mother used to get very angry and she would say to us, "Don't you see that the beans are getting burned!" She didn't beat us, but she scolded us.

Almost always our mother was the one who reprimanded us. It was because we didn't know how to do things properly, and if we didn't learn we wouldn't be able to find someone to marry. That was true. They told us, "How are you going to take care of your husband if you don't know how to cook and you burn the beans?" And they said the same to the boys.

On Sundays, when my parents went to town, we took the opportunity to sell pears and keep the money. At that time there weren't shops like there are today. We didn't spend the money until we had another chance to go to town because there we could buy things that we liked, but we did this in secret. For instance, on a saint's day festival, even though my parents were there, we told them, "Look, mom or dad, we found this coin on the ground!"

Cecilia López, Bayalemó

Yes, the parents scolded both boys and girls. For example, they told them not to play all the time, but also to work; or that they had to go for wood but they could also play with the cars. If they didn't obey, they said the same thing they said to the girls: "You are not going to find someone to marry."

Celia Sántiz, Bayalemó

When the children are really little, parents don't scold them. But when they grow bigger they are taught that they have to work; they have to sow and bring wood to the house, even if the quantity of wood is small. It is usually the father who takes the boys to the milpa and shows them how to weed and use the hoe.

The father tells them how to do it properly, and if he notices that the children don't want to learn, he scolds them by saying that if they don't learn how to work properly they won't be able to find a woman to marry and they won't be able to feed her.

Rosa González, Jolxic

As I was growing up my mother said to me, "That's enough playing! Why do you spend the whole day playing?" Then I went to herd sheep, and she said to me, "Do your work and don't start playing." My father was dead then. My mother stayed at home working and I went to herd sheep with my grandmother. "Hurry up, girl, and stop playing! You have to realize that nobody supports you! Don't you see that your father is dead? Start working and stop playing!" my grandma said to me. I didn't obey, I just played.

Pascuala Patishtán, Bautista Chico

My parents used to beat me because I didn't wake up early. One day, my dad woke me up with a lashing.

Once when I was herding sheep, it started raining, and since I didn't want the sheep to get wet I made them run. Unfortunately, they went into the milpa and destroyed the harvest. They [my parents] beat me again that time. When I was older they woke me up earlier. "Wake up; you can't be sleeping the whole day! Nobody will support you; as a woman you have to cook for your mother," my father told me. "You won't be living here forever; one day you will get married and you will have to cook." "Make me pozol and give me my tortillas! I don't want you to serve only your husband when you get married," my father continued. I obeyed him in everything; that's why he didn't beat me much.

(Continues…)

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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Foreword xi

Preface to the English Edition xv

Acknowledgments xvii

Introduction xix

1 A Woman's Life, from Childhood to Marriage 3

Introduction 3

Our Games 5

Work at Home 8

The Teachings of Our Parents 12

Our Bodies 17

Menstruation 19

The Engagement 27

The Experience of Marriage 37

Living with the Parents-in-Law 45

Pregnancy 51

Childbirth 54

Interview with a Midwife 63

Unwanted Children and Contraceptive Methods 66

Our Relationship with Our Parents after Marriage 70

The Problems of Marriage 73

2 Life in the Community 78

Introduction 78

The Authorities 82

Community Organization 90

The Participation of Women 92

Problems in the Community 97

Women and Education 102

The Spanish That We Learn 112

Illness in the Community 123

Healers in the Community and the Use of Healing Plants Suicide 131

Inequality between Men and Women 134

Our Dreams 141

Religions in the Community 145

Our Ancient Customs 152

Our Customs Today 169

Past Beliefs 173

We Don't Want to Lose Our Customs 174

3 The Importance of Our Textiles 176

Introduction 176

The First Textiles 178

The Weaving of Our Grandmothers 186

The Huipil of the Virgin 189

The Backstrap Loom 195

Our Weaving Designs 197

The Breeding of Sheep 201

Working with Wool 205

Natural Dyes 209

The New Designs 212

Afterword: Voices and Stories of the Women Weavers of Los Altos de Chiapas, 1984-2006 215

Appendix A The Life of Rosa López from Tzutzbén, San Andrés Larráinzar 237

Appendix B Zapatista Women's Revolutionary Law 247

Appendix C Weavers with Their Communities and Municipalities 249

Related Reading 251

Index 253