Handmade with Maya Wisdom

My name is Caryn Maxim. I live in NJ but spend 2 weeks of each month in Cajola, a Maya Mam community in the western highlands of Guatemala. (The Mam people are one of the 22 Maya ethnic groups in Guatemala.) I have been helping a group of women start a weaving cooperative, MayaMam Weavers, over the past years. I would like to share with you some of their work, some of their stories, some of their wisdom, as well as why fair trade -- or trading fairly -- matters.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

The wisdom of our ancestors was recorded in their clothing

Last month we talked about the meanings of different symbols. You can find many of these symbols in our weaving, though the interpretations of the symbols change from town to town (like our languages).

But did you know that you can trace these symbols back to our ancestors? Below is a photo of lintel 24 at Yaxchilan. The woman’s dress has motifs of squares, transformed into diamonds, that refer to the relation among the universe, the earth, and humanity. You can find this motif abundantly woven into many of our traje today in all of highland Guatemala (and on some of our own work as well).

2 comments:

AnonymousMarch 24, 2012 at 6:38 PM
I'm actually quite interested in learning more about this, how the pattern is interpreted, what different parts of the pattern are supposed to mean, etc. This is something I can really get into.
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