Weaving and Cloth Production

Beauty is a duty and a responsibility for us as Mayans from a material and a spiritual point of view. Our grandparents say that it is necessary to be pleasant before the eyes that contemplate us. We should take care in our treatment of others, respect, courtesy, generosity, grace, and delicacy. So also, we should take care with our clothing. The colors of our clothing are excellent motivations, which successfully contribute to reaffirming our identity, dignity, and elegance because the colors also represent forces and vibrations. The beauty and the colorfulness of our clothing don't follow a simple esthetic desire, but rather are the way in which we safeguard the writings and philosophical, spiritual, astronomical, mathematical, geometrical, etc. knowledge of our ancestors.

Generally Mayan dress includes articles woven by hand or embroidered that have special qualities such as the type of manufacture, design, form, motifs, and styles of dress that vary not just from one region to another, but also according to the creativity of the weaver and the person who wears the garment. Artisans produce Mayan clothing. According to historical precedent, it is woven on a backstrap loom and by women. However, factors such as the availability of foot looms, time and money have modified said precedent. For many Mayans it is more economically feasible to use Mayan clothing woven on a foot loom (by men). The articles of clothing that cover the top and bottom portions of the body as well as the middle of both men and women constitute the most visible pieces of Mayan dress and vary in each region.

Although it is true that the technique of weaving on a foot loom could have arrived with the Spanish, backstrap weaving (the technique used to produce the most complex weavings) is of pre-Columbian origin. The narrations of the Spanish in the colonial era report that Mayan weavings already existed before the arrival of the Spanish. Therefore both Mayan pre-Columbian art as well as the Spaniards' very own colonial documents contradict what some people say, i.e. that Mayan weavings are a product of colonialism. On the contrary, the Spanish came to restrict, by way of certain laws, the use of Mayan dress.

Currently, almost all Mayan women use Mayan dress, in contrast to the low percentage of men who use it. This fact is frequently explained by Mayan men as an unfortunate result of social, economic, and cultural pressures of society and the ladino environment during colonialism. Mayan men felt the necessity to involve themselves immediately somehow in the economic and administrative affairs of the country, but not without renouncing their Mayan dress. If Mayan men were the first to establish an interethnic interaction (whether forced or voluntary) in Guatemala, the Mayan women were the ones who assured the preservation of one of the principal cultural emblems. Now these Mayan women and men form an inseparable base that is interacting, resisting, and flourishing as a people.

With Mayan dress we affirm our identity and we say before ourselves and all others, "I am Mayan. We are Mayan. I continue and we will continue being Mayan even though others want to deny us this identity." For this reason, teaching someone to weave is educating him or her in the art of expressing oneself with threads, wool, colors and Mayan designs and forms.