THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC SITUATION OF WOMEN WEAVERS IN SAN JUAN LA LAGUNA

ANDRINA AGNEW

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON

INTRODUCTION

With a smile on my host mom’s face, she proudly assisted me in putting on the indigenous woman’s traditional dress in Guatemala. Concentrating hard, she made sure to fix my hair in two matching braids. My host mother took a lot of care to ensure that her ‘daughter’ from the Untied States was dressed and adorned as a proper woman from San Juan la Laguna. As I emerged from my house dressed in a huipil, corte, delantal, faja and collar, I felt somehow different. Even with the thick corte wrapped so tightly around my waste that I felt like the faja fastening it to my body was a corset, strangely enough I felt sensuality that Carol Hendrickson talks about in her book, Weaving Identities (1995). Unexpectedly, maneuvering in a corte was not as difficult as I initially anticipated.

Walking down the street, the indigenous people and Ladinos reacted in two distinct ways. Wherever I went the indigenous of San Juan stared at me in a way I have never encountered before. Amazingly when I entered the town square, every single pair of eyes was staring at me. For the most part, the looks in their eyes were looks full of sparkling curiosity. As if they were pleasantly shocked, first they remained speechless and then began to smile. Some Juaneros with whom I had never spoken before came up to me and initiated conversation with me. Other people just passing by made comments, such as “Pura Indígena” or “Pura Juanera,” directed at me. Many indigenous people told me that I looked pretty wearing the traditional dress. Surprisingly when I walked into the games area, I was able to move relatively easily through the large mass of people crowded in such a small space. The indigenous people of San Juan seemed to give me a different kind of respect, while the few Ladinos I encountered looked at me as if I were violating some unspoken rule. What shocked me the most is that the Ladinos who normally talk to me pretended that I was not there. During this day I was able to understand the subtle and constant discrimination that indigenous people suffer everyday.

I decided to wear the traditional dress of an indigenous woman for the 24^th of June, the middle day of the festival of San Juan, because one of my new friends asked me if I was going to dress up for the big celebration. One of the traditions of the festival is for all the people to wear new clothes on the middle day. As I did not bring anything special for the day and my friend offered for me to borrow some of her clothes, I decided to take the opportunity to understand how the women of San Juan feel in their clothing. For a woman in San Juan, the traditional clothing is an important part of her identity. Since I am researching the socio-economic situation of the women weavers of San Juan, I felt that dressing how the women weavers dress would give me an insight to their lives.

Originally, I came to Guatemala not only to learn how to conduct fieldwork but to learn about the daily life, struggles and triumphs of the people of San Juan. As a female student of Latin American Studies, the lives of the women in Latin America are especially of interest to me. My first impressions of Guatemala included women walking around Panajachel carrying piles of hand made goods and asking anyone they could if they wanted to buy something. Their persistence and desperation marked my memory and my heart. Without the intentions of trying to imperialize Guatemala, I came here hoping to learn what I could do to help improve the reality of the impoverished people. On the first day of living with my host family, my host mother began to tell me that as a woman weaver in San Juan she has suffered a lot. Considering my background, this concerned me, thus I wanted to find out why the women weavers in San Juan la Laguna suffer.

RESEARCH SETTING

I carried out my fieldwork in the small town of San Juan la Laguna, in the department of Sololá, Guatemala. In 1623 members from a neighboring town, now called Santiago Atitlán, founded the current town naming it New Town of San Juan (Cecotz 2001:1). However, evidence shows that large populations have lived in the area for hundreds of years before it was most recently founded (Cecotz 2001:1). The majority of the people in San Juan speak Tz’utuhil like their most recent founders. San Juan is located on the mountainous highlands of the extreme south-west shore of Lake Atitilán. Like most small towns, the people of San Juan know everyone in the town. If one does not greet people as they pass them on the street, he is considered poorly raised and having a superiority complex. With difficultly, outsiders are able to make friends in this tight-knit community. Only if one is born in San Juan is he a true Juanero, and this remains true even if the person moved to San Juan shortly after they were born and lives here for the remainder of his life. Most people in San Juan are born, live and die here. Because of this, in some way or other everyone in the town is related to each other. According to a survey that Vivamos Mejor conducted in 2001, in total the population of San Juan includes 9,486 people (Cecotz 2001:8). However, of this population only 5,280 people live in the urban area while the others are dispersed along the mountain side (Cecotz 2001:8). This same report indicates that almost one hundred per cent of the population has indigenous ethnicity (Cecotz 2001:9).

The department in which San Juan resides has the seventh largest population of people living in poverty and was one of most affected departments by the thirty year long civil war (Fundación 2001:1,2). The recent devastating civil war has negatively affected all types of productivity in the department of Sololá, including everything from agricultural activity to tourism (Fundación 2001: 2). The main economically productive activities in San Juan are fishing, cultivating coffee, tomatoes, onions, corn and beans; and producing artesian goods (Fundación 2001:2). On average, a farmer in San Juan earns approximately twenty quetzals per day (Winkler 2001:42), which is not a sufficient amount of money to support a family. The current economic situation in San Juan requires women to contribute to the family earnings in order for their family to have all of their necessities covered. Adding to the disparity, an astounding thirty-five per cent of the population remains illiterate (Winkler 2001:22). For the lack of education and the strong historical tradition, the majority of the women choose to contribute their household income through producing artesan goods.

Arriving in San Juan, one cannot help but notice the large number of women that weave using a back strap loom. One of my informants estimated that at least ninety per cent of the women in San Juan weave. Weaving is an integral factor in the daily lives of women not only because their ancestors used to weave but also because weaving is a job where the women can make their own hours to fit into their schedule. In this paper I will focus on four types of weavers in San Juan: sole weavers, intermediaries, those who belong to an association and those who belong to the cooperative. The common factor shared amongst all of these women is that they depend on tourism as their livelihood, even though tourism is only on a small scale in San Juan. My hypothesis is that the women weavers in San Juan la Laguna suffer economically because they lack a market that pays them sufficiently for their time and effort.

METHODOLOGY

Surprisingly, weaving in San Juan is an industry where many rivalries exist between the weavers because it is the primary method in which the majority of women make their earning. Some women refuse to be interviewed because they feel it is not worth their time. Giving information to a foreigner about their trade is viewed as wasting their time because they do not receive anything in return. Acknowledging this concern, I made sure that I brought gifts of bread or sugar to all of my formal interviews in order to give value to the time they spent with me and the knowledge they shared with me. Already, the people of San Juan are accustomed to having foreigners come to study anthropology. To study the marketplaces where the weavers sell their work, I traveled to Panajachel, Chichicastenago and Antigua to observe the types of markets that are available in Guatemala.

My primary modes for collecting data during this field school were participant observation and interviews. Due to the nature of my topic, the short duration of the field school, the celebration of the festival of San Juan and the fact I struggled with an illness for the majority of the time, I had a less than optimal number of interviews. I ended up formally interviewing thirty women who utilize weaving to supplement a portion of their income. In addition to these formal interviews, I also conducted many informal interviews with ladies I met randomly on the lanchas, walking in town and waiting in stores. The ages of my interviewees range from seventeen to sixty-three years old. I purposely choose to interview such large range of women because I wanted to get the different generations’ points of views on weaving. Throughout my research, I utilized many different sampling techniques, including random, convenience and snowball sampling techniques.

Six weeks is an inadequate length of time to build enough trust and confidence between a large number of women so that the women do not look at me as if I were dollar signs instead of a human being. However, with the help of my host mother and a few other women in the community I was able to build a strong relationship in order to observe the daily life of women in San Juan. Overall, my host family was an invaluable source of contacts as it was the base for my research. Besides the women I was able to observe for long periods of time, I made observations of what women were doing as I made my daily house calls. In order to compensate for these inadequacies, I am also supplementing my research with the work of other anthropologists that have studied weaving in San Juan.

Another problem I encountered was that the majority of women do not speak Spanish or if they do it is very limited. When I first arrived I thought my less than adequate Spanish skills would hinder my research, but then I realized that the many of the women here spoke it worse than I did. With help from a translator, I was able to communicate with some of the women that spoke little Spanish. I realize without learning Tz’utuhil I will never be able to break through to all the circles of weavers in San Juan. Nonetheless, I feel that I have been able to sample a sufficient number of weavers for my project. All in all, the information that I have collected gives a glimpse into the life of a weaver.

DATA AND ANALYSIS

A Day in the Life of a Weaver

There is no general schedule for a weaver in San Juan because every woman has different obligations and depending on what day it is she may have different responsibilities. However, what all weavers share is the common thread that above all their primary job is to take care of their family. Weaving is just one of their chosen mediums in which they have decided to provide for their family.

According to one of my informants this is her daily routine: She starts her day at 5:00 am in order to start a fire and prepare the corn for tortillas. After making tortillas and the rest of breakfast, she gives her children breakfast, prepares them for school, and then delivers them to school. Then she washes the breakfast dishes and begins to clean the house, both sweeping and mopping the floors. She begins to weave around 9:00 am, but she admitted to me that sometimes she does not have time to weave because she other business to take care of, such as going to Santiago to sell unripe peaches with sugar. Her other businesses take her to Panajachel, Santiago Atitlán, Chichicastenago and Antigua. At midday she begins to make tortillas again and prepare lunch. After lunch she washes the dishes and begins to weave again until 4:00 pm. At this time she stops to care for her children and start dinner. Once dinner is finished, she cleans up and sometimes starts to weave again. She only weaves at night if she has not had time to weave during the day or if she needs to get an order done.

In contrast, here is the daily routine of another informant: At five o’clock she wakes up, washes her face and mouth and starts a fire. Once the fire is made she puts on the coffee and begins to wash the corn. Next she goes to the Molina to have her corn ground so that she can make tortillas. She returns home and makes tortillas and breakfast for her family. After eating breakfast, she makes her bed and begins to make tomalitos. Around eight o’clock she goes to her daughter’s house to help her make a meal for the kids at the school close by her daughter’s house. She returns at 11:30 am to make lunch for her husband and her youngest daughter. After lunch she goes to her church, and from her church she goes to sick people’s houses to help them. Sometimes she does not return until 5:30 or 6:00 pm. She then makes dinner and bathes herself. However, there are other times when she comes home from her daughter’s house that she begins to clean the house. After cleaning her house, she will clean or weave until dinner time. She does not have time everyday to weave, but when she does have time she will weave. Since she is already 63 years old, she does not weave like she used to because it is strenuous work.

Generally speaking, every woman’s day begins very early in the morning usually ranging from somewhere between three o’clock to six o’clock in the morning. Once she wakes up, her responsibilities include starting the fire in the morning in order to prepare coffee and breakfast. Because each meal includes tortillas, the woman must first wash and cook the corn to prepare it for the Molina. Usually the woman cooks the corn the previous day in order for it to be ready for the day. After the corn has been ground, the woman makes tortillas and prepares breakfast for her family. If her husband works in the fields, she must fix a lunch for him to bring with him to work. If the woman has young kids in the house, she prepares them for school. Only after her family has eaten and are ready for the day, can the mother eat her breakfast. Once she has helped everyone else with what they need, she begins her other responsibilities, which include: cleaning the house, washing and ironing the clothes, visiting her children at school, preparing all the food for the family’s meals, cutting and gathering kindling, weaving, ordering and selling their crafts. Some women, who are extremely busy and have sufficient money to cover their necessities, hire other women to help them clean their house or wash their laundry. In my six weeks of living here I have yet to see a woman simply lounging around all day relaxing because she has nothing to do. As shown in the two previous examples of a woman’s daily activities, many weavers also have other jobs besides creating their artesian goods. Some of these jobs are voluntary in which they gain prestige in their community and others are to supplement their lack of earnings in weaving. The majority of women work at least three days of the week on their weaving, and for each day of weaving they physically part take in some sort of the process for at least four or five hours. Sunday is the day of rest for most weavers because many of them consider it a holy day and because they want to spend time with their husbands, who are home from the fields.

The Tradition of Weaving

In San Juan la Laguna the art of weaving has been passed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years. Originally, mothers taught their daughters how to weave in between the ages of six and twelve years old because they needed to know how to make clothing for their future family. Now women are taught to weave by a mother figure in order to earn some money for their family. As Margarita simply explains, “if there is no weaving, there is no food.” This statement clearly demonstrates the importance of weaving to the people of San Juan. Over time the role of weaving has changed from a method of creating clothing for one’s family to a method of obtaining money by selling one’s woven goods to tourists. The women of San Juan still weave for their own personal use, but I did not talk to a single lady that solely wove for her family’s own consumption. The amount of woven goods that a woman utilizes depends on her financial situation. Through my research, I noticed that the family’s income varied directly with the amount of products the family uses. Some women explained to me that they do not use their own articles because it costs too much money. Others make use of their woven products when they need certain items for special ceremonies. On a regular basis, other women reported that they utilize their huipiles, fajas, delantals, napkins and rebolsos. This change of consumers has influenced not only the types of products that women weave in San Juan but also the style, color and designs of the woven products. Weavers in San Juan have adjusted the types of goods they weave according to either what they, their intermediary or their organized group thinks the tourists want to buy. No longer are styles of woven goods only subject to the changing tastes of the local population but now they are subject to the volatile fads of the international market. Many of the women I interviewed admitted to me that they are constantly changing their designs because if they did not the tourists would get bored of the work and therefore not buy it. In the past, there was only cotton thread and natural dyes. Now women use cotton, silk, mish thread and the thread of used sweaters with both natural and chemical dyes. The change in threads and dyes is related to the change in technology and the price inflation of the weaving materials over the years. Most recently there has been a surge to go back to using pure cotton and natural dyes as some tourists have become concerned with the harmful effects of some chemical dyes. Also, a few weavers have been using this current fad to try to incorporate the image of their ancestors into their work in order to sell more.

Besides the change of who the target consumers are of the woven goods, the increase of education has also created a social change in the attitude toward weaving. Over the years the level of education has risen in San Juan. Many of the women I talked to could not read or write Spanish. On the other hand, the same women were able to call on their children when they needed help to write something. One woman that was never given the opportunity to go to school learned how to write her name from her children. This same woman hopes that all four of her children will leave San Juan to study in order that they earn titles to work in a professional job. With education, she sees her children as being able to break out of the vicious cycle of poverty that she is currently living. These hopes of hers include that her three daughters do not weave and sell their work as their primary means of income. Another young Juanera sees her future as being successful through obtaining a title in school. Her mother has already taught this specific girl how to weave. Instead of weaving as her fulltime job, she is attending school in Xela (Quetzaltenango). When I asked her what she wants to be when she grows up, she could not answer the question. However, what she definitely knew was that she did not want to be a weaver like her mother. Maybe this is just a way a teenager chooses to express her rebellion, or maybe it is a sign of the change. The reality of a young Juanera going to school is different than those girls who do not continue studying. Studying is the only reason why people told me that a woman may not know how to weave because those who study do not have time to weave or learn to weave. One lady with whom I spoke learned how to weave only after she got married because everyone in her family studied commerce. Because of her embarrassment of her lack of knowledge of weaving, her mother-in-law taught her how to weave.

The increase of education amongst the weavers themselves has created greater competition between the women that try to sell their goods to tourists in marketplaces. The older women reported that the competition has risen incredibly because now everyone knows how to ordear, weave and sell. In the past, there used to be only three women in San Juan that were capable of selling woven goods because they were the only ones that had a good enough command of the Spanish language to be able to describe and convince people to buy their goods.

One aspect of the tradition of weaving that really confused me when I first arrived in San Juan was why there were so many women who did not wear huipiles with their cortes. I saw many females wearing lace blouses, blouses made out of fabric and t-shirts. At first I thought that it was wrong that these women were not wearing huipiles like the image of a Maya should wear, but then I realized that I was just caught up in what Ladinos and outsiders have described as an indigenous person is. Of course, in the United States I do not wear the same clothing as my mother or my grandmother did when they were young. Why should these women have to wear the same clothing as their ancestors did? When I asked women why they did not always use a huipil with their corte, they responded that in a variety of different ways. The most common answer was that it costs too much to wear a huipil because a huipil usually costs somewhere between three hundred and four hundred quetzals depending on the pattern and the thread of the huipil. At the same time, one can by a t-shirt in fairly good condition from the United States for twenty quetzals or one can buy a lace or fabric blouse for around fifty quetzals. Financially it makes sense to buy the t-shirt or the blouse over a huipil especially if one does is struggling to purchase all of their basic necessities for her family. Another common answer is their mother always put t-shirts and blouses on them when they were young. They are simply in the habit of wearing this clothing. Some women are too hot when they wear huipiles; for this reason they like to wear lighter fabrics.

Another impression I had about the traditional dress before I arrived in San Juan was that all the women would be wearing the same cortes and the same huipiles because that is how Robert S. Carlsen describes the recent fashion trend in Santiago Atitlán in his book titled The War for the Heart and Soul of a Highland Maya Town (1997). Because Santiago Atitlán is relatively close to San Juan la Laguna, I assumed that the fashion trends would be the same in both towns. To my surprise, the situation in each town around the lake is completely different. In San Juan they have not had a resurgence of their culture identity like the population of Santiago Atitlán has. Looking around San Juan, one finds many women wearing huipiles from different towns and very few females wearing the actual dress of San Juan. When I asked women why other women did not wear the huipiles characterized as being from San Juan, the usual response included the female looking down at the ground, giving a small giggle, and then with a smile on her face answering that women wear different huipiles because it is fashionable and they like it. Another common response was that perhaps the huipiles from San Juan are too thick and make the women sweat too much while other huipiles are not made with different thread and are cooler to wear. I feel that I must clarify that there is a small minority of women that do wear the “traditional” dress from San Juan everyday. However, even though the majority of women in San Juan do not wear the “traditional” dress from San Juan it does not mean that the women are not proud to be Juaneras. One of my informants explained to me the common belief of people from San Juan is that the indigenous dress was invented by the Spanish during the conquest in order to identify which indigenous people were working for which Spaniard. For this reason it is acceptable for people to wear different towns’ dresses because they do not want to validate the racism that they face on a daily basis. Personally, I feel the Ladinos reacted so poorly to me dressing up in traditional dress of the indigenous peoples of Guatemala because they view their dress as sacred. By my putting on their dress, I was somehow devaluing it. However, the Juaneros saw me wearing their dress because I wanted to and because I liked it which made them happy.

ORGANIZATION OF WEAVERS

Working On Their Own

For the lack of time, the remaining fear of organizing left over from the Civil War or the simple desire to work alone, women choose not be a part of an organized group. Usually, these women sell their goods to tourists that come and visit San Juan or go to Panajachel to sell their goods. Sometimes intermediaries come to their houses to ask them to make certain items.

Intermediaries

There are approximately fifteen intermediaries from San Juan. Their job is to travel to different markets to sell what the women weave. Since a lot of their time is dedicated to selling, they are unable to produce enough work to sell only their goods. In order to have a sufficient amount of goods, they ask other women to produce certain items with the promise that they will sell the other women’s goods for them. The main complaint about intermediaries is that they keep part of the other women’s money to cover their expenses, but they don’t tell them that’s what they are going to do.

Associations

There are five different associations currently in San Juan, and each association is run slightly different manner. Historically, there have been a lot of conflicts between associations and amongst the women in the associations. Some associations have problems with debts because some people pay their share of the debt while others refuse to pay. Other sources of conflict include different members of the association suspecting that other members of the group are taking money from them. Amongst all the failed associations, there are, nevertheless, a few associations that have managed to succeed.

One example of how a successful association is run is the association of Artesanía Pérez. This association only works with tinte natural because that is only what their ancestors used. It is important for this group to continue the traditions of their ancestors. Of the twenty women in the association, a small group of the women are actually from a neighborhood outside of Xela called Ciento Veinte Cuatro. This group of women was allowed into the association because they are poorer than the women here and because they are widows from the civil war. At the present time the association would like to let more people in, but they cannot right now because there are not many places to sell to generate more work. Each woman in the association works in her own house because she has other responsibilities to attend to. It is the job of the President to visit all the women and make sure that the women are producing good quality of work. If the President does not approve of the quality, then she will not permit them to put their work in with the others. Each month the President buys materials for the group. If their work is not selling well, then she buys the materials every two or three months. The President travels to Salcaja’ to buy the white thread that they use, and then they dye that thread to weave. The President is the only woman of the group that travels to sell the group’s work. According to the President, the other women would get lost because they would not know where to take the buses. Also the other women do not know Spanish as well as she does. They can understand Spanish, but it is difficult for them to answer questions. Since the President is 48 years old, sometimes she tells the other women that she is going to quit, but the other women said that they would no longer be in the group if she left. The President is also the one that decides the women what to make because she knows what sells.

Another example of a successful association is the Associación de Mujeres Tejedoras de Tinte Natural Lema’ that began in September of 2000. There are currently 13 women in this association, and they are all from San Juan. Right now these women only meet once a month because they do not have any orders or business, and their meetings only last for an hour. If they have business, then they meet once a week. As the President of the association, it is her duty to go to the different women’s houses and check up on their work. The President has to make sure they are weaving what they are supposed to be weaving and that the quality of work is good, too. In this association the women only work with tinte natural. As a measure of precaution, this association has board of older women that supervises current board that is in office. The members of the older board have the job to make sure that current board is doing what they say they are doing. If there are any conflicts the older board can give them advice and guidance. This association is currently working with Fundación Solar’s project to create a museum in San Juan.

MARKETS

In San Juan

Throughout San Juan there are few women who have their own little stores. These stores could be a room in their house facing a main street or they could be a makeshift store in their backyard – basically any place close to a main road so that tourists passing by can see their work easily and buy it. There are even more women that do not have a store, but wait in their houses for tourists to come by or for friends to bring tourists by in order for the women to sell to them. For me, this method seems slightly confusing because I do not understand how tourists know which houses to go to should want to buy woven goods.

In Greater Guatemala

The places that some intermediaries travel to sell the work of the weavers of San Juan are Antigua, Panajachel, Chichicastenago, Xela, and Guatemala City. The markets in Panajachel and Chichicastenago are similar, where the women set up their own stalls to sell to tourists and locals that are passing by. Everyday women are selling their work in Panajachel because of the large number of tourists that visit. The competition is very competitive in Panajachel, and many women refuse to sell in Panajachel because in order to sell their work they have to sell it for the worth of the thread. On the other hand, Chichicastenago only has their market on Thursdays and Sundays. In Antigua, there are two stores that buy work from the weavers Nim Pot and Colibri. The people in the store ask the intermediaries to make certain type of work and then from there they divide the order between the different women in the town. Only after the stores sell their work do the stores pay the intermediaries and then they pay the other women. When intermediaries go to Xela, they send the collected work to Osotrama to be sold. The arrangement with Osotrama is similar to the same arrangements with the stores in Antigua. One time a year in July there is an exposition in the capital close to the airport. Different women take samples of their work in order to be put up for show. In the exposition if someone sees work that they would like, they then place an order with the lady who made the article. This system is somewhat like a magazine because after the people place their orders they have to wait for the woman to make the item and send it to them by mail. The exposition is a great way to reach people all across Guatemala and the world so that the weavings can be seen by people who normally would not be able to visit in person.

Recently the women have been complaining about the drop of tourism in Guatemala after the September 11^th terrorist attacks. From my own personal experiences, the fear of traveling by plane has increased tremendously in the United States. This has further harmed the economy in Guatemala especially for the women in San Juan as their livelihood relies on tourism. With fewer United States citizens traveling and spending money in Guatemala, the plight of women here has increased.

Internationally

There is one international company, Mayan Traditions, that purchases woven goods from a group of women in San Juan. One of the main goals of this company is to try to help the women around Lake Atitlan make more money. Currently, Mayna Traditions works with four different weaving groups, including: Chirijox, Quejel, San Juan la Laguna, and Chuacruz. There are twenty women in their group in San Juan. The main complaints from Mayan Traditions about the weaving industry in Guatemala are that intermediaries usually make more money than the woman who wove the item and that stores here usually only charge for the thread. Mayan Traditions used to work like an intermediary, but they did not like how that was working. For this reason, they made their own group of women. However, even with their own group they ran into some problems as one of the ladies was manipulating the other women and taking money away from them. To solve this problem, Mayan Traditions dissolved that group and made a new one with basically the same women minus the manipulator. In order to prevent a repeat problem, they go to San Juan and pay the women directly. Mayan Traditions plays the sensitive role between the market in the United States and producers in Guatemala. They understand that sometimes what the women want to produce would not sell in the US. Making a compromise, Mayan Traditions have changed the colors of the women’s work to make them more aesthetically pleasing according to the trends in the US but they have maintained the same designs.

To maintain Mayan Traditions fair-trade commitment, they offer a couple of programs to compensate for their relatively low pay (that is compared to the global market). One of their programs is a scholarship program. Right now in San Juan there are 16 students that are on scholarships through their company. All of the students are children of the women in their group. They give each student approximately 200 quetzals per month, which roughly pays for half of their schooling. With this program the students have to consistently pass their classes. During their school breaks, each student has to go back to their mother’s weaving group and teach something to the group. So far, fifteen students from San Juan have graduated with the help of Mayan Traditions. Another program that Mayan Traditions has implemented is their health program. Twice they provided Pap smears to all women. They have also had an eyeglasses campaign because they realize that the women’s eyes get damaged by weaving. Close to their office in Panajachel, they also have an herbal medicine garden from which they give medicine to the different women. At first they gave the herbal medicine to one person in each group for a month, and that person was responsible for distributing the medicine to the different women in the group. However, like the money they realized that the medicine was not getting distributed like it should have been. Now they give the herbs directly to the sick woman. They also realize that herbal medicine does not always fix their illnesses, so if a woman has to go to the doctor Mayan Traditions pays half the cost.

CONCLUSION

The future of weaving in Guatemala depends on its intricately delicate relationship with national and international tourism. With the future of weaving also lies the future of the women of San Juan la Laguna because through their weaving they are able to maintain their family while earning an extra income. Weaving is also a part of the identity of the women in San Juan that goes back to traditions before the Spanish conquest. Even though the art of weaving has gone through many changes and will go through more changes, it will continue to be a part of a true Juanera. The difficulties that the weaving industry is currently experiencing have to do with the lack of a market that is willing to pay sufficient money for their work. With luck more companies, such as Mayan Traditions, will come to Guatemala to export the goods to foreign countries. The problem of poverty can only be helped once the women are paid the money that they deserve.

REFERENCES CITED

Carlsen, Robert S.

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Cecotz Completo

2001. Available at the Municipality of San Juan la Laguna, Sololá, Guatemala.

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Laguna, Sololá. Guatemala: FLASCO, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias

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Hendrickson, Carol

1995. Weaving Identities: Construction of Dress and Self in a Highland Guatemala Town. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Winkler, Katja.

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el caso de Guatemala. Guatemala: FLASCO, Facultad Latinoamericana de

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