You Are What You Wear

Imagine if everyone in the city of Houston wore red shirts and everyone in Austin wore blue shirts. That's what Guatemala is like. When the Spanish came to Guatemala in the 16th century they had each village wear a different color "traje," a traditional dress/suit, so they could identify where someone was from. That tradition has managed to survive through today, making Guatemala one of the most colorful and tradition-rich countries in the world.

These women are from Santa Catarina, a village about 5 km up the road from Carey and me. They are easily identified by their turquoise traje and blue or purple head dress. Most all indigenous Mayan women and their daughters continue to wear traditional traje today.

It's becoming less common for Mayan men to wear traje, mainly because the suits are relatively expensive and they are worn out too fast while working in the fields. This man is likely from Solola, 20 minutes from Pana. It's a pretty cool look, despite the fact that the length of his pants make him look like he's waiting for a flood : )

The traje is made using two very old methods: 1) backstrap and 2) wooden loom. Mayan women are responsible for the huipil, the blouse, or top part of the traje, and the Mayan men (usually younger boys) work to create the dress, or bottom part of the traje.

Here you can see a woman making the huipil using the backstrap weaving. It appears to be a pain-staking, uncomfortable way to weave, but the end product is beautiful and can sell for about Q800, or $100. Women wear the huipil of their village everyday and it will last them several years.

The looming process that the men use to create the corte (dress) is very different. They start with these foot long threads......next they use this old-school method to spin the thread onto small spools...

...finally the young men take the spools and toss them back and forth through the loom for the final product...
Check out this video to see how it's done. These guys work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. It takes them 3 full days, 30 hours, to make one corte/dress. For this work they'll receive around $3-$4/day, assuming they can sell two cortes a week. Believe it or not this is pretty good pay.

This little cutie was kind enough to pose for me to show the finished product. The corte comes out of the loom in one 10-15 foot piece. You can see how this corte has been sewn together from two different pieces (top and bottom). These cortes cost around $50 each.

A quick word on donating clothes as an American: Chances are if you've ever donated clothes into one of those big metal bins in a parking lot they're ending up in Guatemala or other developing nation. These American castoffs are sold to the locals here for super cheap. The beneift is that they provide people with a good, cheap option for clothes. The downside is that the clothes are so cheap that less and less people are wearing their traditional traje, thus losing an important aspect of their culture. It seems that no issue today is as black and white as we would like it to be.

Thanks for checking in! We look forward to seeing many of you in December when we're home in Texas!

Love, J & C