Imagining many words and worlds

23 September 2017

The past few weeks I’ve been designing this website with the help of a friend. It has taken me into uncomfortable territory, for example sharing my personal history with the world, in essence saying “Look at me!” Today I thought about how strongly this activity contrasts with the ethos of my Maya women friends’ lives. They emphasize collective, not personal identity. Many conversations with them over the years have taught me about the strengths and weaknesses of both collective and individual orientations, but one particular conversation stands out to me.

It was 1998, the year after the massacre in Acteal, Chenalho’. I had gone to see my friend Pancha Pérez Pérez who is member of Tsobol Antzetik and of Las Abejas (The Bees), a Catholic social justice organization formed in Chenalho’ in 1992, a couple years before the Zapatista uprising. At that time, Pancha and her husband and seven children were surviving off of less than one hectare of land. When their corn supply ran out, usually six to eight months before the next crop was harvested, her husband worked in others’ fields in return for corn. The couple had to purchase all their beans and other foods.

Pancha and I sat in her courtyard on a warm June day while she embroidered images of bees on cloth and I asked her about how she came up with the idea. Earlier in the year I had received a little string bag with bees on it in a box of textiles from her co-op and I was eager to ask Pancha what made her decide to embroider the image on a bag. Pancha told me that the idea came to her one day when she was sitting in her courtyard feeling desperate about feeding her children. Into her despair flew a line of bees, some of which landed on the ground nearby. Although Pancha had seen bees often, this day they drew her attention and she knelt nearby to examine them:

I saw their shape and their traje (clothing), that they have two colors, black and yellow. I thought about how they make honey and have wings. “It’s the same in our Organization, Las Abejas. We make good things and try to fly. I want people to see how we are,” I thought.

Later that day Pancha embroidered the bee design on a piece of cloth that she made into a coin purse. She put five bee images on the bag – one in each corner and one in the middle. She brought the bag to the next co-op meeting and showed it to the other women.

“It’s very pretty,” the women said. “Why don’t you show us how to make it?”

After the women made it, I saw that the people in the United States liked them because they didn’t return them to us. That’s why I made many more.”

Pancha took some bags to a store in Acteal where women refugees were selling their artisanry. These women also liked the bags and began to copy them, as well. I was impressed with how Pancha’s first thought was to share her creativity, not hoard it for her personal gain. Eventually, Pancha thought of putting the name of her organization on the bag, Sociedad Civil Las Abejas. As with the bee design, Pancha shared the writing idea with others in the cooperative. Eventually many women and their children in the co-op began to embroider words, phrases, and even little testimonies on bags, such as the following:

¡Zapata vive ¡La lucha Sigue!  
Long live Zapata! The struggle continues!
¡Viva las mujeres en lucha! ¡ La lucha sigue!
Long live the women in struggle. The struggle continues.
Gentes de Chiapas mueren de hambre.
People of Chiapas die of hunger.
Tierra sagrada de Acteal
Sacred ground of Acteal.
22 de diciembre de 1997 fue el masacre de los 45 indigenas inocentes en Acteal.
The 22^nd of December of was a massacre of 45 innocent indigenous people in Acteal.

In recent years, Pancha’s children and other children have specialized in making the bags. Before the women of Tsobol Antzetik began to sell their work in the U.S., children learned to embroidery before learning to weave. In recent years, embroidering images of animals and plants on bags and cloth has been a way for children to develop their skills and earn a little money to buy their school supplies. In 2016, when I was in Chenalho’, Pancha’s proudly presented her youngest daughter, Beti, who at five was embroidering images and words on little bags.

Children have chosen to depict not only animals in their township, like bees, pigs, horses, chickens, cats, but also animals from foreign places, like bears and giraffes. Similarily, along with images of trees, corn plants, and cobs of corn that surround them, they embroider cacti that grow in arid lands, like the desert where many of their U.S. customers live.

Pancha’s primary goal in creating a new product to sell was to earn cash to feed her children. But a related goal was to communicate her identity as a Las Abejas member to the world beyond her township. Unbeknownst to Pancha who rarely leaves home, other women in different parts of Chiapas had started to do the same. Over the years embroidered texts and images on cloth have blossomed like lush trees throughout Chiapas. These creations show a deep consciousness of identity and place. They depict daily practices like farming and reading the Bible, as well as icons of movement solidarity, such as Commanders Ramona, Tacho and Subcommander Marcos. They also exalt the Zapatista ideas about gender. In 2016 I found a piece of cloth in a Zapatista store in San Cristóbal that inspired the title for my first novel, When a Woman Rises:

When a woman rises, no man is left behind.

Go to my home page for more embroidered images made by children.

Go to www.weaving-for-justice.org to purchase children’s cloth books with animals and numbers.

To read more about textile creations that communicate that other worlds are possible, see Duncan Earle’s chapter in Artisans and Advocates in the Global Market: Walking the Heart Path, SAR Press, 2015.