Maya women from highland Chiapas, Mexico have been weavers for as long as their people can remember. Weavers say that in the beginning Moon taught women to weave sacred designs. After the Spanish invasion in the 1500s legends describe how female saints gave communities their distinct designs. Today weavers encode in their creations the deeply held belief that people, plants, animals, Earth, and other spiritual beings must cooperate with each other to keep the world in flower.
At the end of the 20 th century, Maya weavers still turn to spiritual guides as well as to each other for help in weaving and in supporting their families. The recent economic crisis in Mexico and long-standing inequalities in access to land and other resources in Chiapas, have created intolerable conditions for indigenous people. Hunger and disease, high child mortality, scarce and distant water supplies, and minimal or non-existent health and educational facilities are the legacy of this unjust economic system.
Lacking enough land to raise their food or wage labor opportunities, many Indigenous families depend on women's earnings through sales of artisan work to tourists. However, markets in tourist centers like San Cristóbal de Las Casas have not been stable nor fair. Before women began to work collectively to sell their weavings they were at the mercy of shopkeepers who paid them very little and then sold their weavings to tourists at inflated prices.
Tsobol Antzetik (Women United) is a group of about eighteen Tzotzil-speaking Maya women from several hamlets in the township of San Pedro Chenalhó who have been working together for about fifteen years. Through cooperatives like Tsobol Antzetik women sustain a quiet but determined resistance to being incorporated into a way of life that puts profits before people and that denies them control over their products. Working at home on back-strap looms weavers earn cash while fulfilling their household obligations and honoring their people's traditional ways of working.
Through collective work women also confront and try to resolve political problems in their communities. The women of Tsobol Antzetik are strongly committed to social justice. Most are supporters of democracy who oppose the domination of the PRI (the official party in Mexico) over their lives. For their convictions the women have been targets of opponents to change in their township. Mexican troops and paramilitaries have been waging a low-intensity war in Chenalhó against supporters of democracy. Actions of these men resulted in a tragic massacre on December 22 in Acteal, a hamlet of Chenalhó. Some of the women in Tsobol Antzetik lost friends and relatives among the 45 women, men and children who were killed that day. Despite this loss and ongoing threats to their lives, the women of Tsobol Antzetik stay united around their work as weavers. The women's weaving is an act of faith in the future, a future we are all building together.
While in Chiapas in February and March 2009, Christine Eber took some video clips of daily and ceremonial life in Chenalhó. Please click on the links below to view the video clips on YouTube.
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