Las Cruces Chiapas Connection is a volunteer organization with its roots in a number of community and University groups in Las Cruces, New Mexico that formed in the years following the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas on January 1, 1994. The main focus of our group has been helping women in three weaving cooperatives sell their weavings through fair trade markets that we find or create in the U.S. This focus of our group has been encouraged by anthropologist Christine Eber as a result of lessons learned during her research in Chiapas in the 1980s. In 1987 while living in San Pedro Chenalhó with a weaver and her family, she saw first hand how the economic crisis was deepening poverty. Before the debt crisis of the 80s, indigenous families augmented semi-subsistence farming by working for periods of time on sugar plantations, cattle ranches or on public works projects. These jobs were demeaning and necessitated being away from their families for months at a time, but they kept hunger at bay. In the 80s, the Mexican government cut back much of its support to public works projects and subsidies for farmers in order to pay back its foreign debt and to receive international funds for industrializing the economy.

Our work with weavers has as its central focus helping weavers take control over the process of reinterpreting traditions and educating the public along the U.S./Mexico border about the negative effects of globalization. We work with the weavers to create products that will sell in the U.S., but will not lead to distorting or disrespecting their cultures and lives. We also try to connect weavers in Chiapas with women's organization on the U.S/Mexico border that are trying to improve their economic situations and to address violence toward women. The two main groups that the weavers in Chiapas are connected with are Creaciones Yuca of Chaparral, New Mexico, and Amigos de Las Mujeres de Juarez.

Over the years LCCC has also provided scholarships for children in Chenalhó to attend school past sixth grade, study grants to women and children to study weavings designs and prize money for competitions, like the one we describe in our newsletter. After many years of providing scholarships to children in Chenalhó, the Maya Educational Foundation in Vermont has offered to continue this work for us so that we can focus on assisting weaving co-ops. MEF is a highly respected foundation that provides scholarships to hundreds of Maya students throughout Chiapas, Guatemala and Belize. Please check out their website for details about their programs. If you would like to donate to the scholarship program in Chenalhó, please note that on your donation to MEF.

Through our friendships and working relationships with indigenous women and their families, Las Cruces Chiapas Connection has fostered alliances across our differences in which we work together to keep alternatives alive, alternatives that resist the homogenizing and marginalizing forces of globalization.