WOMEN AND THEIR WAYS:

GROWING OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN’S DEVELOPMENT IN SANTIAGO ATITLÁN

Allison Sanchez

Smith College

Santiago Atitlán is an impressive town, located on the boca costa of Lake Atitlán. Volcan Toliman and Volcan Atitlán dominate the background, and the impressive and solitary Volcan San Pedro rises before it, just across the small harbored bay that is the domain of old fishermen, masterfully navigating the waters in their wooden cayucos. Santiago Atitlán is the largest town of those around the deep lake, on the cusp of becoming an indigenous city, diverse and intense with all the conflict and cooperation that exists in any densely populated center. Here, religion is palpable, with Catholic and Evangelical congregations in competition to raise their voices to newer levels, carrying their songs of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ to further reaches, while the cigar-smoking, rum-drinking wooden character that is Maximon embodies the syncretism that has evolved between ancient indigenous beliefs and the influences of instituted religion. Maximon serves as a metaphor for the character of all of Santiago Atitlán, for he represents a balance of power that is neither strictly benevolent nor malignant. Santiago Atitlán itself harbors generational conflicts that exist between the elders who retain their indigenous Tz’utujil heritage and the youth who are coming of age in a more globalized world, shedding their indigenous identity in favor of a more mainstream one. These conflicts are visibly evident in the distinctions between the traditional traje the elders wear and the Abercrombie caps and Hilfiger jeans the adolescents prefer. They are audible on the streets, where Tz’utujil, the language of this people, is the only language of the elders but increasingly lost on the youth in favor of the more universal Spanish. Ultimately, the heritage of farming and fishing is giving way to refusals to labor and desires to engage in more technological enterprises. Many of these generational distinctions can be better understood in the context that was the Guatemalan civil war, in which Santiago Atitlán was the site of much hardship and tragedy. These dark decades that were defined by violent discrimination against many for their indigenous heritage have left all unsettled in its wake. Understandably this has affected many attitudes about the meaning of identity. Disappearances and death divided families permanently, leaving many wounded and poor and struggling to survive through the aftermath. This burden was that of those who lived through the war, predominantly women, and a force in the lives of those who have come of age since, who are their children.

Amidst it all, the tragedies of the war and the inspiration that is survival, three organizations have since emerged in Santiago Atitlán, conscientious of the needs of its people, making every attempt to support those who lived through the war years and those who are rising up in its wake. These organizations strive for community development by providing employment and support for the women of Santiago, as well as for their children. Shared among all three is a belief that by enabling poor women to stimulate their own lives through choice and confidence, the entire community will benefit. The Cojol ya Association, Creaciones Chonita and Puente de Amistad each provide local avenues for such development, with the support of internationally based foundations. The Cojol ya Association of Maya Women Weavers is dedicated to preserving the ancient art of backstrap loom weaving by making it an attractive option for employment and therefore "an economically viable and sustainable art form." This association desires to be a completely locally directed enterprise that empowers women, with the intent of involving the entire community in preserving this defining tradition of Santiago Atitlán. Creaciones Chonita is a locally owned and operated beading business that contributes to the welfare of the community by providing competitive employment for women, particularly who have lost fathers and husbands to the turbulent civil war years, as well as sponsoring school scholarships and providing food and medical benefits for those in need. The Cojol ya Association and Creaciones Chonita are able to provide competitive wages through the support of conscientious foreign organizations and markets, willing to purchase the products of these women’s labor at a cost that sustains their livelihoods as well as the community development projects of the businesses. Puente De Amistad is itself an internationally founded microcredit agency that provides small loans solely to women, without direction or dictation on how to apply them, in order to support poor women in their enterprises in an effort to improve their life conditions for themselves and their families. This is exercised through this financial support as well as through continuing educational opportunities, such as developing money management skills among the women and providing scholastic scholarships for their children.

Methodology

Primarily, information gained for the purposes of this study was obtained through individual interviews and participant observation. I was introduced to each organization with the assistance of program directors and colleagues, after which point I made further contacts through those initial interviews, my own participation and observations. I discussed the origin and organization of the institutions based here in Santiago Atitlán with the directors of each, as well as attempted to discover their perceived influences on the community through my own questions and observations. Formal and casual interviews, as well as voluntary participation enabled me to gain perspective on the design and impact of each organization. I was even referred to the web sites for each, to better sense how they project themselves to a greater audience, attempting to increase support for their efforts.

The Cojol ya Association

What is the Cojol ya Association?

The Cojol ya Association is a non profit organization dedicated to preserving the ancient art of backstrap loom weaving by economically empowering Mayan women weavers. As the tradition of backstrap loom weaving is in the process of being lost among Maya women, weaving must become an economically viable and sustainable art form in order to ensure its survival. The Cojol ya Association seeks to provide a dignified and sustained income to as many women as possible for the production of their magnificent textiles.

The Cojol ya Association, or Asociación Cojol ya de Tejedoras Mayas, is an organization of Mayan women weavers, founded in 1983 by Kandis Krummel, an American woman who had arrived in Santiago Atitlán in 1978 to discover that the art of hand-crafted Mayan weaving was increasingly endangered. Cofounder of the association is Antonio Ramirez Sosof, a native of Santiago who shared this concern for the ancient custom of weaving. Together they built an organization that aims to preserve this tradition among women by establishing it as an economically viable art form.

The Cojol ya Association currently works through the Museo y Centro de Tejido, opened just this year, April 26th. The museum was only able to be developed recently through much volunteer assistance, and can now serve as the base for the board of the Association, which had previously been located in Guatemala City. The museum primarily serves as a center for weaving information, intending to expand to become the premiere source for traditional backstrap loom weaving resources.

Currently, the association is networking throughout the Santiago community, to encourage women to consider weaving for the center. The word is that if any woman needs money and has the skill, she can weave for the Centro de Tejido for a profit. Women who then approach the center are able to choose from already warped pieces. Warping is the process of wrapping the various colored threads around a pegged board, called a warp board, to prepare the piece for weaving. This initial step is completed in the center in order to standardize the quality of the weavings. After this point, each woman weaves in her own home. The effort, as Kandis describes it, is to maintain weaving as a sustainable art form by standardizing the process and the pay so that it becomes an attractive option of employment for women. Many of these women come from substance level household living, with the husband most likely farming and the women staying at home with the children making the tortillas and weaving their own clothing. This is why she emphasized that the Cojol ya Association wants the to support women in their own lifestyles. The idea is that they do not disrupt their daily routines, that they do not need any expensive training, for they come with skills already, and that they do not need to leave their home and therefore worry about such concerns as finding child care. These women can work in their own homes on their own time and still be actively involved in a sizable export market, making fair wages for their weaving.

Each woman is paid a standard amount per day for a specified number of days for each particular weaving. This is predetermined, for each weaving is run preliminarily through the center, in order to be able to determine how many days it takes an average weaver to complete the piece, beginning to end. The Association then pays each woman, who chooses to work, for that many days of weaving per piece, no matter if it takes her a longer or even shorter amount of time to weave it. Kandis stated that the Asociación Cojol ya pays its women weavers thirty quetzales per day, whereas, by comparison, other weaving projects pay half that. This is how the Cojol ya Association maintains it pays competitive wages and supports already existent lifestyles. Each woman who approaches the center to weave, does so on her own initiative, and continues to weave for the center on her own accord. Kandis and Antonio both emphasized the point that each woman may decide not to weave at any moment, for the project was designed in such a way that they had to make no commitments. Currently, of the 30 or so active weavers for the Association, Kandis says there is a core of about 13 loyal women who have made this project their career. The other weavers come and go, turning over entirely on occasion. As women weave more and more for the Association, patterns in their preferences develop, the more consistent weavers seeming to prefer to specialize in particular products or weaving styles, which suits the Cojol ya Association as much as it does the women involved.

The Asociación Cojol ya was designed in such as way as not to require the women involved to commit themselves, their names, nor their addresses in order to gain employment. This was a conscientious effort to respect the attitudes women and men carry with them still from the more turbulent war years. Kandis stated that people here have long memories and the history of violence in this country cannot be forgotten. Many are certain that the threat of violence is never really gone. Men and women of Santiago Atitlán don’t want to commit to associations and formalized institutions because they never know if the military will target it as a guerrilla organization and then target its members. The way it is organized now, women may come and go as they please, working when they choose without committing themselves, which seems to be the most comfortable for everyone involved. Even now, with a relatively more stable environment, Kandis does not want to deter women by necessitating a contract or signature. In this way, the Cojol ya Association respects the concerns of the community, which has and continues to strive to recover from decades of turmoil and trauma.

Ideally, Kandis wants the organization to be fully directed by local women and men, to maintain the art of weaving as a community tradition, and does not want it to be or be seen as her own project, as it has often been up until now. The real goal is for this to be a sustainable project that is directed by the women who are the weavers. Kandis envisions this program as a pilot project, with the intent of expanding to neighboring communities that do not have the tourist trade as it exists in Santiago Atitlán, on which they can be dependent. She dreams of incorporating newer styles of weaving from these other communities, which possess different histories of weaving techniques. She is also encouraging skillful women weavers to use their ingenuity and inspiration to create newer designs and techniques, that will ultimately preserve the traditional art form by maintaining international interest. Other future developments intended for the Museo y Centro de Tejido include such attractions that will encourage more foreign interest and tourism, and subsequent financial and volunteer support for the efforts of the Asociación Cojol ya within the community, which will enable the Association to provide such incentives as medical benefits for its employees, and continue to develop into a foremost community resource on backstrap loom weaving, providing weaving lessons and tours and activities for local school children who are less and less coming from traditional weaving homes so that they will be able to understand and identify with this that is part of their heritage.

Another such employer of women with an invested interest in community development is that of the locally owned and operated Creaciones Chonita.

Creaciones Chonita

After entering into the bead workshop, Creaciones Chonita, I first noticed that, on the back wall of the workshop is hung a photo of Chonita's family in front of her shop as it was some years ago, for the building's appearance is quite different and the women in the photo are clearly younger, although Chonita still is old enough to have her graying hair. The contrast between the building as it appears in this photo and how it is now is dramatic, for in the picture Creaciones Chonita is a simple whitewashed building that is visibly deteriorating where the iron window grates attach to the outside wall. The only words printed on the front of the building are large black non-uniform block letters that read: "Chonita" Beadwork; Mayor y Menor. Coming upon the building today, the sight is much more elaborate. The building is fully repaired, painted a clean light blue, with large colorful script identifying the place as "Creaciones Chonita" fading from light green into purple for each word, and shadowed, as seems to be the current fashion throughout Santiago Atitlán. Beneath the title, reads, in smaller back script: “Fine bead jewelry; Retail and wholesale; made by a group of women who believe in women's development.” Beneath that, in purple script, reads: “Joyeria en mostacilla fina; Venta por mayor y menor.” To the right of the window, is a large and colorfully printed: “Hay Vida en Jesus.”

Creaciones Chonita is a bead workshop that was started by Chonita Sojuel Mendosa herself some fifteen years ago. It was the circumstances of Chonita’s own life that defined how she established her business, and for whom. Chonita personally survived the decades of war, but not without tremendous loss. She is a wartime widow, her husband having been killed in 1981, during the more violent years of the civil war, when their daughter Dolores was only five years old. Both Chonita and Dolores know the hardships that come from such personal tragedy, that is why Creaciones Chonita was founded as a business that provides jobs specifically for women who suffered such grievance and loss, and continues to do so today, establishing Creaciones Chonita as a strong support within the community, dedicated to aiding wartime widows and children.

The business is able to pride itself on maintaining a high quality standard of jewelry and fair wages for its employees, supporting women left impoverished after the violence claimed their husbands. Chonita herself developed and directed the growth of her business, but since 1998, a year marked by the death of Chonita’s son, Dolores and her husband, Domingo, have taken over the management of the business, continuing the efforts begun by her mother.

Currently there are eight women working at Creaciones Chonita, but at times as many as one hundred, depending on the size of each order. This business also is flexible with its employment, supporting more women whenever it is able. The women work a standardized week, 9 a.m. until 4 p.m., Monday through Saturday midday; are paid more than competitive wages; and also receive paid holidays for important local events, such as the festival of Santiago Atitlán and Semana Santa. According to Chonita and Dolores, they are paid per piece of jewelry they produce. Included in determining the final cost of each item is the amount of labor involved, which means that more complicated pieces that take longer to produce will cost considerably more, no matter their size nor the amount of beads and materials involved. Ultimately, this means that the beadwork from Creaciones Chonita is more expensive than any that could be found on the main tourist street, but this is due to important differences. The business pays the women workers for the labor they invest in each piece, not simply charging the minimum to cover the costs of the supplies. In this way the women earn a more suitable salary, and Creaciones Chonita can gain more to dedicate to its community aid projects. Dolores credits the prosperity of the business today to the ingenuity and intellect her mother possessed, able to manage the money for the business throughout all it’s stages of development, so that it could continue to expand and give back to the community.

The women of Creaciones Chonita were prosperously employed for years, but the past two have been difficult, for business has been reduced due to competition from the street vendors who are willing to sell at much lower prices. Creaciones Chonita has lost much of the local market to the vendors on the main tourist streets, for multiple reasons. One is that the business is strict about the quality of work, and some of its previous employees, according to Dolores, were frustrated with this, so went and sold their lower quality pieces on the street for a lower price. Another reason, which Dolores described as a viscous cycle, is that women would learn how to make quality pieces through the business and still go and sell them on the street for lower prices. Now the business is not getting enough work locally, so many women aren’t able to be employed right now. Those who are working are being encouraged to be more creative and inventive with their beadwork to get more interest in their products.

Creaciones Chonita is surviving, however, through considerable support by international organizations invested in such conscientious businesses. One such support is based in the United States, entitled Sharing the Dream, which declares that it walks with the people in Guatemala by helping cooperatives who then help their communities. This organization purchases the beadwork from Creaciones Chonita at a decidedly fair price, as well as contributing to the development of design and quality so the products are bought and valued in the United States. The intention of this organization is to purchase the crafts of cooperatives in Guatemala at prices that can continue to support these businesses in their efforts to contribute to the welfare of the people through community development projects.

Creaciones Chonita suits these standards, not only for its express investment in supporting widows and their children through gainful employment, but also because it has developed specific community aid projects within Santiago Atitlán. Just this week, for example, Creaciones Chonita will be distributing twenty-five bundles of food, including corn, beans and rice, to widowed women and their children. Dolores said that they donate foods every two to three months, depending on the prosperity of the business. I asked Dolores how they determine who shall receive such donations, and she said that Chonita knows all of the woman due to their shared experiences and losses, and that they have divided themselves into groups, that rotate, each accepting donations in turn. The business also provides support for children’s education, enabling five students to attend school on scholarships. One of the students is also an employee of Creaciones Chonita, whose mother was widowed during the war. Chonita also hosts an American student, who arrived through Sharing the Dream. Jeannette Rude is a volunteer, housed by Chonita for free in order to provide free lessons in English. Dolores said that this serves many purposes, for not only are children and adults able to take free lessons in English from a native speaker, who can help them considerably more than the teachers here from Santiago Atitlán, but it also provides an avenue through which Dolores and Chonita are able to assess which students are particularly interested in their education. They can then strive to support these enthusiastic students through scholarships as well. Finally, a project that is being developed currently, is one that will enable poorer residents of Santiago Atitlán to access medical attention for free. Through their church, Dolores and Chonita hope to combine efforts with a medical doctor who is providing free medication for the people he attends, but they must pay for the appointment. Dolores and Chonita envision providing the necessary financial support so that those unable to pay for the appointment can receive medical attention.

This endeavor, combined with the existing community aid projects initiated and supported by Creaciones Chonita, characterize the strong beliefs held by Chonita and Dolores and all others who support them, including Sharing the Dream, which are deeply dedicated to educating and providing for those who are unable to do so for themselves, due to impoverishment and personal loss, much of which is rooted in the strife defined by the civil war years.

Another such organization that has a dedication to women's development and established similar community aid programs in the aftermath of the civil war is Puente de Amistad.

Puente de Amistad

Puente De Amistad is a Guatemalan organization, whose foundation is Friendship Bridge, a non profit, non governmental organization based out of Colorado in the United States. Friendship Bridge originated from an effort to assist Vietnamese women and children survive the aftermath of the Vietnam War, begun by Connie and Ted Ning, and American couple who had adopted a Vietnamese child. In 1998, barely two years after the Peace Accords put an end to over thirty years of armed conflict in Guatemala, a period that was particularly intense in the area of Lake Atitlán, Friendship Bridge established itself in Santiago Atitlán under the direction of Sophy Wolters (Searle Acevedo, 2002). Based on the success of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, Friendship Bridge developed a micro-enterprise loan program, providing low-interest, small business loans to impoverished women in Guatemala and in Vietnam who have the energy and foresight to emerge from the shadows of war and long-standing poverty.

Currently, Puente de Amistad supports 1200 women in the greater Santiago Atitlán region with its micro-credit program. It offers loans from Q750, which is approximately $100, up to Q1200, for a six month loan period, with 16% interest rates per year. For women to receive a desired loan, they first work with the Puente de Amistad to develop a work plan over the course of eight classes, that serve as orientation for credit before distributing each loan. Throughout this process, each woman consults other women who are willing to sponsor her to receive the loan. As it is structured, five women comprise a loan group, all of whom have entrusted their sponsorship for each other. Each woman signs the loan in her own name, thus it is entrusted to her based on her word and that of the other women willing to sponsor her. There is no request for collateral of any sort on behalf of Puente de Amistad, and there are no other complicated directions for the issuance of each loan; they are distributed to women who prove to have full sponsorship and maintain that they will benefit from the microcredit, even after the introductory sessions. The predominant projects women in Santiago Atitlán apply credit towards are weaving; purchasing and selling coffee and beans; and small animal husbandry. Primarily women apply credit towards enterprises they are already engaged in, in an effort to stimulate their current projects to better support themselves and their families.

The concern on behalf of Puente de Amistad is that each woman fully understands their options and obligations before approving a loan. This caution serves to prepare each woman for the responsibilities of each loan, the benefits of which are clearly expressed in a 98% payback rate. This degree of success for a microcredit organization of so few years is notable, which is primarily due to the consciousness Puente de Amistad possesses that wants to serve the women and the community while “making every effort to avoid falling into the trap of an ‘assistencial’ model of development, which tends to creates attitudes of dependency” (Searle Acevedo, 2002). This is avoided due to conscious effort on behalf of the organization to include the women of the loan program in development programming, listening to their concerns comments.

Puente de Amistad is invested in overall community development by working for the betterment of women’s positions and support for their families. This it pursues by continuing to offer educational and organizational meetings for all of its borrowers throughout the loan period. These are provided every two weeks, and cater to the needs and concerns of the women, continuing with the general themes of their lives. Ten meetings are dedicated to preventative health, twelve on continuing management skills, and two on education. These also provide an avenue through which the women can become involved with the organization and its planning, affecting changes to suit the needs they have.

Community development is not only accomplished through the radical microcredit agency, but also through the provision of educational scholarships by Puente de Amistad, a program developed in response to the concerns of the women borrowers. During the first year of its establishment in Santiago Atitlán, Puente de Amistad witnessed the difficulty with which the women were able to gather and maintain the funds to support their children’s education, including purchasing school supplies and uniforms. “In 1999, Friendship Bridge began to experiment with loans for education, issuing twenty-five individual loans in one credit group. However, it turned out to be impossible to collect these debts. The following year, in 2000, the Project initiated its scholarship program, enrolling 214 students from Santiago Atitlán... In 2001 the Project grew, and the Education program expanded to 774 school children receiving scholarships, which included registration fees and school supplies” (Searle Acevedo, 2002). Now scholarships are provided to the children of all borrowers who apply for them and have successfully completed a six-month loan cycle and whose children do not receive scholarships from other sources. This community support has been well received by the families, as well as the schools, who recognize that otherwise many of these children would not have the opportunity to attend school. In this way, Puente de Amistad encourages women in Santiago Atitlán to value education, since it becomes a much more readily accessible option for their children, enabling them to broaden their expectations for the future, inspiring a sense of confidence that is much deserved after emerging from the desolate and desperate period of civil warfare.

FINAL REMARKS

Puente de Amistad recognizes that its clients suffer the burden of triple discrimination: they are women, they are poor, and they are indigenous (Searle Acevedo, 2002). The truth is that all the women supported by each of these three organizations suffer from these debilitating discriminations, struggling to establish themselves in a community that has only recently begun to surface in the wake of civil war and violence. It has been difficult for the impoverished women of Santiago Atitlán to establish themselves without much needed support. With recent memories of war still very palpable, evidenced by women having to continue on to surmount the obstacle of poverty without the familiar support of their husbands and fathers lost to the conflict, three organizations have secured a place within the Santiago Atitlán community to address the concerns of women throughout. The establishment of the Cojol ya Association, Creaciones Chonita, and Puente de Amistad, has increased the services and support available to these women, providing competitive wages and flexible employment, as well as educational support for themselves and their children. Women’s development has become a priority for these organizations in an effort to aid and revitalize Santiago Atitlán, for each recognizes the crucial role women play in realizing the goal of establishing a prosperous and cohesive community. Santiago Atitlán is vibrant with all of its differences and distinctions, yet out of this seeming dissonance ultimately emerges a sense that is entirely Santiago, one that is developed with the support of The Cojol ya Association, Creaciones Chonita, and Puente de Amistad.

REFERENCES

Ÿ www.cojolya.org

Ÿ www.sharingthedream.org

Ÿ www.friendshipbridge.org

Ÿ Searle Acevedo, Katherine. 2002. “Friendship Bridge: Combining Micro-credit and Education in Guatemala.” Tides Foundation Interim Report. June 19, 2002.