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The Mayans Among Us
Migrant Women and Meatpacking on the Great Plains
By Ann L. Sittig, Martha Florinda González UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
Copyright © 2016 the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8032-8581-1
CHAPTER 1
Guatemala
Life before Emigration
The Mayans interviewed emigrated from the hamlets and municipalities of the western highland provinces such as Huehuetenango, San Marcos, and Quetzaltenango. Most cities have paved streets and transportation systems, while some of the outlying villages still have winding dirt roads. Some adobe houses are topped by commonplace straw-thatched roofs, and others have tin or tile roofs. Subsistence farming is the main industry, with some mining and handicraft production. Maize is the most prevalent crop, but the rich soil enhances wheat, potato, barley, alfalfa, and bean cultivation. In warmer areas, coffee, sugarcane, tobacco, chili peppers, yucca, achiote — a seed to color food — and fruits are grown. Families cultivate crops on small parcels of land, taking advantage of the abundant rain and fertile soil. Those with a stable economic situation also raise animals, mostly sheep.
The women speak Q'anjob'al, Mam, and K'iche', three of the many Mayan languages spoken in Guatemala. Those who attended school also speak Spanish. The women sometimes refer to their Mayan languages as dialecto, or "dialect," because that is how it is often referred to in Guatemala, although most educated Mayans do not use this term, knowing it is a denigratory construct coined by the dominant class, to diminish and erroneously categorize their more than twenty languages as mere "dialects" of Spanish. In Nebraska, the Mayan women often refer to their languages as "Mayan," in general, because most Americans may not be aware they speak languages other than Spanish. In Guatemala the indigenous often state they are "Maya Q'anjob'al" or "Maya Mam," and so on, referring to their particular indigenous identity in a show of self-respect. Being stripped of one's actual ethnic group and language, or having it misrepresented or misdefined, has led to the internalized colonization and racism that many Mayans strive to overcome.
According to Michael Coe in The Maya, the Mayan language linguistic family is made up of numerous interrelated yet mutually unintelligible languages, but classification is difficult. Very early there was one Mayan language, Proto-Mayan, which split into Huaxtecan, Yucatecan, Western, and Eastern Mayan. In the Western Mayan group they spoke Greater Cholan and Greater Kanjobalan, which later developed into Cholan, Tzeltalan, Kanjobalan. The Eastern Mayan group spoke Mamean and Greater K'iche'an. Languages largely define Mayan groups and ethnicity.1
As small children, the Mayan women began helping out with household and farming chores as soon as capable. Some of them lived in small villages remote from the main cities, but they would regularly go to the centers on market days to shop and socialize. They walked for hours to the market if they couldn't afford the public transportation provided by crowded local trucks. They recall dancing to marimba music at town festivals, but for the most part, living in poverty meant they got up early and started working, stoking the outdoor fire for cooking, and mixing the nixtamal, corn masa, to make tortillas for the family, before everyone set out to work, planting and harvesting corn and other staples, or tending the small herds of sheep. Some had to haul water from pumps in the middle of the village or from rivers and lakes, carrying it long distances home.
Mayan Dress
Since childhood the women wore their traje, the Mayan clothing that varies according to indigenous ethnic regions and language groups, and exemplifies the country's more than 50 percent Mayan citizenry with multicolored, artistic designs. The Mayan women have worn a woven blouse or huipil, and a woven skirt or corte, while living in Guatemala, but in Nebraska they only don their Mayan clothing on special occasions.
The traje displays economic stability and cultural prowess for Mayan women, as they are not only costly, but also extremely time-consuming to make. Manuela details:
The huipiles and cortes are very, very expensive, and can cost 500, 1500, or 2000quetzales [the Guatemalan monetary unit, equivalent to $65, $195, or $260], depending on what the traje is like. Back in Guatemala each woman has about five cortes so they can change clothes every day. Some are simple, but the very beautiful ones are really expensive. In my family those that knew how weaved their huipil, blouse, and the cinta, sash to roll up in their hair. I can weave a little.
When I came here I only brought the trajeI was wearing while walking for about two days. You can't cross over with the traje, so we left them thrown out in the mountains when we crossed over the Mexican border, to change into clothes we brought. [She laughs nervously.] You get so triiiiiste, saaaad ... because it's your traje, but that's it! You have to keep going. You have to keep walking. And then afterwards, here, you have to buy pants, a blouse, and a jacket.
After Manuela described the moment she parted with her traje we both fell silent for a long while.
With disappointment in her voice, Juana also explains this abandonment of Mayan clothing:
When I came to the U.S. I wasn't wearing my traje. I was dressed like this, in American clothes, but there, I wear my traje. I didn't bring it with me when I crossed. They sent it to me afterwards. When you cross the border you don't bring anything. Nothing. Nothing at all.
The traje I have here is for decoration. I don't wear it. Once when there was a Guatemalan fiesta here, a celebration, I did wear it. Oh my, when we have a fiesta, a celebration ... it is so beautiful. In Guatemala they have a lot of fiestas with a dance, and they are very, very beautiful.
The Mayan women must wear American clothes during the border crossing to hide their identity, from the time they set foot in Mexico. In that way, if intercepted and caught, they will only be sent as far south as they can convince border officials was their starting point.
María laments this drastic change of feigned identity that forces the abandonment of Mayan regional dress:
In my village everyone was Mayan, and I used to wear my traje from my region. But I arrived here wearing these clothes, because if I had arrived wearing the traje they would know for sure that I'm from Guatemala. I left my traje in Guatemala, and when I go back to Guatemala, pretty soon, I will have to wear it. I don't have it here. It's that.... [Silence.] It's a big change for us. In the beginning, you feel bad because you are used to wearing your traje, your indigenous clothing, and here you wear other clothes. It's really awful. Some people who come here with a visa, come wearing the traje because they can travel here, to work, and then they go back, so they bring their traje. But we can't.
Donning American clothing is physically and emotionally estranging to the Mayan women. The physical loss of the traje takes place during the journey, but its emotional vestiges remain throughout the transition period into the new country, and these feelings still linger in their lives. Martha explains that in the end it is simply more cost effective to buy and wear out cheaper clothing, especially working in the meatpacking plant. Using the traje in the United States becomes secondary and superfluous. What they really need is money to support their children and to send home.
One time, when Martha spoke at a conference in California she donned a spectacular and gorgeously colorful traje bearing the Mayan calendar day symbols in bright turquoise, yellow, purple, red, and pink on a maroon background, with multicolored Guatemalan textile strips running the length. Together we admired it in silent awe, and Martha explained, "This is like any clothing. It goes in and out of style as the women change the patterns, colors, and designs, according to what occurs to them and the materials that are available. And the outfits themselves wear out. We like to have a lot of different trajes." The presence and use of the day signs on this newer traje "reflect the reclamation of the Maya calendar ... Like their ancestors before them, weavers design with purpose the universe into Maya cloth, creating continuity between the old and the new."
Martha is adept at switching her dress here in the United States, in a place where the traje only holds one identifying meaning for unaware onlookers. In the past the women only wore the clothing from their village, but as transportation and communication improved, indigenous women gained access to trajes from different villages, and nowadays they don each other's clothes in an act of respect and appreciation, and also to economically support those who fashion and weave them by hand. In her book La nieta de los mayas, Rigoberta Menchú alludes to seeking out trajes to wear to give her acceptance speeches when she won the Nobel Peace Prize because there wasn't time to have a new one made. Word went out, and the women felt great joy and honor in offering the best huipiles they had from ceremonies, weddings, and celebrations to be worn for the Nobel acceptance ceremonies.3 At times like this the Mayan indigenous female base is one and the same. Other times they joke about wearing the traje from another area, especially if they are planning on acting out at a dance or festival by having too much fun; the traje will confuse onlookers into thinking they are from the town it comes from, and in that way they avoid besmirching their own town's reputation, but this is said mostly in jest.
Most of the time the traje provokes admiration and respect, as their eyes light up when they talk about it. Mayan anthropologist Irma Alicia Velásquez Nimatuj explains the deep, intermeshed meaning beheld in the traje and its use for Mayan women: "Maya textiles and regional dress carry many meanings: cultural symbolism, centuries of history, a changing and sometimes contradictory indigenous culture, respect for nature, and so on. But it is time to start recognizing that these same textiles also carry a history of racial, cultural, social and economic exclusion that we Maya of Guatemala have endured but have resisted for 479 years. The textiles and regional dress are also a sign of the historical and day-to-day resistance that Maya women have put up to maintain and pass on their culture."
Donning the traje and its relationship to identity and ethnic origin has been a political issue for the women. Wearing the traje was prohibited in Guatemala in schools using uniforms, but in 1999 education officials said indigenous students could attend classes in their traditional dress rather than wearing a uniform.5 Again, the Mayan women have had to deal with discrimination regarding their cultural attire on both sides of the border.
The Agreement on Identity and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was signed in 1995, guaranteeing indigenous people the right to wear their traje, and ensuring national respect for indigenous clothing as well as intolerance for discrimination against those wearing regional dress. In 2002 Velásquez Nimatuj was told she couldn't enter a restaurant in Guatemala City because she was wearing her traje. She describes the way the Guatemalan government's dependence on transnational capitalism, caused by new political economic pressures linked to neoliberal changes in the world economic system, has led to indigenous women's dress being used to bolster the tourist industry: "Official state and economic elite policy at home and abroad has been to exploit Maya people through the 'unequal exchange' of textiles that are bought cheap from local Maya producers and sold at high prices to tourists, and to folklorize Maya cultures through cultural representations of Maya cultures that ignore the complex economic, social and racial realities endured daily by some eight million Maya men and women that live in this small Central American country." 6 Similar to the Peace Accords, the agreements are in effect, but the reality in the country remains largely unchanged.
The first time Martha's son, who was born in Nebraska, saw her wearing her traje at home, in preparation for a public presentation, he broke down in tears. "I was so concerned, and at the same time so hurt. I realized the core of my being is something entirely foreign, and even frightening to him. It was an awful moment of truth." The separation from home culture and identity felt by the migrating generation and the cultural reality as perceived by the younger generation in their new country are often at odds.
Manuela compares the low monthly wage she earned in Guatemala directly to the cost of a traje, demonstrating its priority for them. The indigenous dress and its accessibility become the symbol for identity, ethnicity, and favorable socioeconomic status or mobility. This direct relationship between employment earnings and traje purchasing power in the end determines that she cannot continue working in her country.
Having the traje stowed safely in Nebraska represents a part of all they left behind, and they attire themselves in it for celebrations, whereas in Guatemala their main concern has been sustenance, rather than whether they could wear the traje. They point out that wealthier indigenous Guatemalan women arrive in the United States by plane, wearing their traje, in a display that connotes the privilege of economic stability, but the poor are stripped of their identity in the desert. This constant shedding of identity, over and over, becomes "snake-like" in nature.
Ixchel is the Mayan goddess of weaving, childbearing, and healing. She is also the goddess of the moon, and women can relate to this, as both follow a twenty-eight-day cycle. She dons the two snakes that represent fatal venom as well as its healing power twisted together in a headdress that crowns her. Ixchel laid the groundwork for Mayan women to practice her legacy of adaptive behavior that always facilitates survival, as she empties out her vessel of old water in preparation for replenishing it with all things new, much in the same way that the women shed one country and clothing to take on a new one, or shed internalized oppression to revest themselves in the traje in Guatemala, as an act that frees them from the oppressor that had disrobed them of their cultural pride.
Kaqla, a Mayan women's group, has identified and deconstructed all these layers of shedding and adapting new attitudes regarding wearing their traje to ensure Mayan identity survives in a united front that is inclusive of the different ethnicities. They describe the shame that wearing the traje imbued due to racism, discrimination, and external attitudes that denigrated their culture. Dressing as Ladinos has also been portrayed as more professional, thus facilitating upward socioeconomic mobility, especially in the larger cities. When some Mayan women insisted their children wear indigenous dress to school, backed by the protection of the 1999 agreement, they were saddened when their children were victimized by both teachers and students. Mayans have participated in much thought and discussion regarding whether to continue using the traje or abandon its use. Martha says: "When I am in or traveling to Guatemala I always wear my traje maya, Mayan dress, but here I don't. I would be really uncomfortable if I arrived there and I wasn't wearing my traje." This statement reflects how Martha deals with the struggles Mayan women have been through to assert their right to display self-identity and self-esteem. They wear the traje for "cultural and identity reasons, but also, as an important political and economic action, since it permits an economic movement related to weaving that provides earnings and economic autonomy to women."8For Martha, wearing her indigenous dress is a political, economic, and social activity, and as an indigenous activist, switching to Ladino dress would be an action denying her Q'anjob'al Mayan identity that she so prides.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Mayans Among Us by Ann L. Sittig, Martha Florinda González. Copyright © 2016 the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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