A new exhibit is on display at the Brubeck Arts Center Gallery. A colorful collection of original Mayan Indian hand woven textiles are on display through January 2020.
Guatemala is a small country — roughly the size of Kentucky — at the northern end of the Central American isthmus, bordering Mexico to the north and El Salvador and Honduras to the south. It is a land of bright flowers and rainbow textiles.
Some 20 indigenous Mayan tribes still adhere to tradition and wear their handwoven and elaborately embroideredhuipiles (blouses, pronounced wee-peel-es), cortes (skirts) and pantaloons, creating a polychromatic explosion on a landscape already vibrant with blaze-orange jacaranda, fuchsia bougainvillea and azure skies. The costumes of these rural people — who are less subject to modern or outside influences, or even interested in them — express their native artistry and are an intrinsic part of the country’s beauty, especially on festival and market days when everyone wears their finest.
And so it is with the remote Quiche Maya, who turn their village of Chichi into one vast produce and textile market every Thursday and Sunday. Twice a week this small mountain town becomes a temple of tipica, the Spanish term for native handicrafts and now used by some in a derogatory sense for second-rate goods. Others, however, view tipica as a treasure trove of ethnic wares, inviting the discerning eye to ferret out the aesthetic from the everyday. Chichi offers such a challenge.
In ancient times, these jungles were home to the Mayan people, one of the largest and most complex civilizations of the ancient Western Hemisphere. The Maya lived in tightly organized city-states, practiced advanced architecture and astronomy. The Mayan were the only culture in the western hemisphere to develop a true system of writing. In addition, their most revered artistic tradition was textile production.
According to Mayan traditions, the people were taught to spin plant fabrics into yarn and weave them into textiles by the goddess, Ix Chel. Ix Chel was a moon goddess, earth goddess, and embodiment of wisdom, fertility, and female virtues – depending on which form she decided to take on a particular day – who was said to have woven the cycles of life. She is often shown wearing a backstrap loom, which is the traditional Mayan loom. This loom is actually worn by the weaver, strapped around the back and waist and anchored to a tree or similar object.
The fact that the Maya have a goddess of weaving tells us something about the importance of this tradition. It was revered above nearly all other art forms and practiced by noble and common women alike from a young age. While the Maya filled their world with characteristically colorful and vibrant woven textiles, perhaps the most significant was a traditional garment called the huipil. Each huipil was carefully and intricately designed to feature symbolic images and patterns that went far beyond simple aesthetics.
Weaving was a semi-sacred action that connected women to Ix Chel and was as much a form of philosophy as it was an art. Each weaver’s design reflected themes of history, personal identity, spirituality, and cosmological philosophy, which other people within Mayan society would have been able to understand.
To this day, weaving is a revered art form in many parts of Guatemala, particularly among the 50% of the population that identifies as Mayan. For the most part, it’s still done on traditional backstrap looms, contains traditional symbols, and, after a brief increase and then decrease in the use of synthetic fibers, relies on traditional materials. It’s also become a strong symbol of the nation. As Guatemala has worked to define its place in an increasingly globalized world, this unique textile tradition has been continually upheld as something distinctly Guatemalan. In fact, since at least 1947, the government has actively passed legislation mandating state regulation and protection of Mayan textiles.
