Final Days in Santiago

Throughout my time in Santiago Atitlán, I’ve learned a lot about the challenges of microenterprise and small-scale development work. Working on a community-based project like Just Apparel requires a dedicated interest to the community, an ability to triage complicated issues, and most importantly, a capacity to communicate effectively and work together with individuals who come from a cultural background that is very different than your own. When I first came to Santiago, I didn’t realize how dependent I would be on Dolores for translating between Spanish and Tz’utujil, the indigenous language that all of the women speak. Communication would have been nearly impossible without a translator. Even with Dolores acting as translator, many of the specific details about the product designs were lost in translation as we began to come up with new product designs and ideas. Since the product designs had Western influences, many of the women were unfamiliar with why or how one would use, for example, a placemat or headband. These are items that the women themselves do not use. We had to be very patient and detailed in describing the products and actually using models and examples of what we had deemed marketable to an American consumer base. However, it is also important to make sure that by doing so we weren’t requiring our artisans to abandon their traditional techniques or individual style.

Natik has such a strong foundation in the Santiago Atitlán community, and something that I think has made the Just Apparel project different is how have incorporated the women’s insight in the creative process. While we did specify sizing details and fabric templates, the product color schemes and specific embroidery designs are all unique works of art created by each woman of the cooperative. A believe that a key component of the success of our Just Apparel project is this incorporation of this participatory development method that supports and respects local community traditions, while still encouraging economic empowerment opportunities.

Like I had realized at the beginning of my project, the problem in this community isn’t the lack of desire to work but instead the lack of opportunity to work. My time in Santiago Atitlán has shown that with a greater awareness and expansion to bigger markets, this project has great potential for genuine improvement in human livelihood in this community. I left Santiago on August 1, after a farewell party with new friends at the local bar and saying goodbye to my host family and Dolores. It was sad to say goodbye to Santiago—a town that I called home for two months—but I feel proud of the work that I have accomplished there in such a short time. I know I’ll come back someday! Next up, I spend 11 days traveling northern Guatemala and Belize with some friends that I have made in my time in Guatemala. Stay tuned for tales of cliff jumping, spelunking, volcano hikes and snorkeling with sting rays and sharks!

Semana de la Feria!

Every June and July on Lake Atitlán, the towns that surround the lake celebrate the patron Saint's days of their respective towns with about two weeks of a city-wide celebration called "La Feria". Complete with ferris wheels, gambling games, fried food booths, and live music, if there wasn't a large volcano looming in the distance behind the festivities, you might not even know that you are in the quaint evangelical town of Santiago Atitlán when La Feria comes to town. The normally quiet town at night livens up to celebrate, and luckily for me I am here to experience La Feria in my last week in Santiago!

All of the towns around the lake have the festivities, but the event corresponds with each town's particular patron Saint's Day. For Santiago Atitlán, the Saint is Saint James and the festivities cumulate on July 25 each year (thanks to my boyfriend Patrick for his wiki-investigation that provides a bit more detail on the Saint and the meaning behind the festivities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James,_son_of_Zebedee).

The games and booths have been up for about a week now, but Tuesday was a parade kicking off the final week, and Wednesday and Thursday nights were parties, packed streets, live music, beer tents, and tons of fun! Here are some photos! Enjoy!

Ferris wheel with volcano views

Ferris wheel at night

Games

The music truck preparing for the parade

Parade clowns on stilts

All of the local schools had performances

So many bands!

There was a dragon...

And Jesus, of course. 

Boys dressed as men from the countryside

Crazy masks

Hawaiian girls

The gringo crew at Quilas

Limbo!

Live band at a bar on Feria night

Tuk-Tuks, Coches, and Chicken Buses-- oh my!

Visiting the Just Apparel women this week has been an extremely rewarding and fun experience! Dolores and I traveled to neighborhoods on the outskirts of Santiago to visit each of the women one-by-one in their homes. We were able to check in with each woman individually to make sure that she understood the Just Apparel project, and also see if she had any questions or concerns. I also had the chance to speak with each woman and learn a bit more about her family and her background, as well as check out some of the other embroidery and beadwork that she was working on at home. It was a good way to help build a personal relationship with each woman, and gave me an opportunity to appreciate her unique artistic skills! 

Petronila and her daughter, and an example of her work

Concepcion can multi-task as a momma

Sharing a laugh with Micaela


Some of Carmen's beaded bracelet designs

As I was traveling around Santiago and the surrounding communities this week, I decided that you all might like to know how I’ve been getting around in Santiago. The heart of Santiago is pretty bustling during the day, and pedestrians have to watch out for the three wheeled tuk-tuk taxis that zip through the narrow cobblestone streets. Tuk-tuks cost about $0.50 per ride and take you anywhere around Santiago. The communities nearby Santiago are usually accessed by pickup trucks with built-in handrails in the truck bed. To board, you climb into the back of the truck— standing room only! When you are ready to get off the truck, the proper way to notify the driver is slamming your hand on the truck cab or the side of the truck as hard as you can, until the driver hears you. These are cheaper (about $0.15-$0.25 per ride) and take you much farther than a tuk-tuk.

The coches, with passengers in the truck bed

“Chicken buses” (as the gringos call them) are available for longer trips. So far, most of the chicken buses I’ve seen that start in Santiago are headed towards Guatemala City. Chicken buses are often old American school buses. The school buses are auctioned off and driven down to Guatemala after they have been deemed that they are too old or have too many miles for American use. Chicken buses are usually brightly painted, but behind their playful exterior there lies a bloody secret. Being a bus driver in Guatemala City is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, with over 900 bus driver fatalities in the past decade due to a sharp rise in gang violence. I have had really positive experiences riding chicken buses through my travels in Nicaragua. For obvious reasons I have chosen to avoid them here in Guatemala, even though Santiago is a quaint indigenous town and is nearly a four hour drive away from the capital city, where most of the violence has been occuring. However, the stories about the bus dangers are a constant reminder that even though Guatemala’s brutal civil war has been over for more than 15 years, civilians in Guatemala still have to be wary of the potential of violence on their way to work or their way home to their families.

All warnings about Guatemala City aside, Santiago is a spectacularly beautiful town with some of the most amicable people I have ever met. I hope you enjoy this video I made that highlights a day in my life traveling around Santiago!

 

Me llamo "Tany"

Small-scale microenterprise projects have emerged as one of the most promising development models in recent decades. Research has shown that microenterprises have contributed to livelihood enhancement in thousands of poor communities around the world. However, success stories take time. I’m only going to be in Santiago for two months, so I was really excited to get going on our project as soon as I arrived!

Dolores translating from Spanish to Tz’utijil in Monday's meeting

We spent the first five days that I was here in Santiago trying to figure out logistics about fabric and finances. Anyone who has studied development or worked on a project knows that every project comes with its fair share of unexpected hurdles and challenges! Buying fabric seems like an easy task at first, but actually there are a lot of questions to be answered. Should the women weave the base fabric by hand, or should we purchase local fabric to work with? What styles and colors of fabric are available for purchase in Santiago, and where can we find fabric that is high quality, affordable, and in the colors that we desire? How much fabric does each women need for each product? What is a fair living wage for the labor needed to complete each piece? These questions were some of the things that we thought of after we had already decided which products were making, which colors and designs we wanted, and how we were allocating funding to make the products.

An added challenge is that the majority of the women speak the indigenous Tz’utijil language and only limited Spanish, so I can’t speak with them without a translator. I wouldn’t be able to do anything without Dolores, the Natik’s General Manager in Guatemala, who is fluent in both Spanish and Tz’utijil! Since my name is challenging for many of the women to say, I have started introducing myself as "Tany" to most of the people that I meet in Santiago.

After finally working through all the kinks, we set out to purchase fabric from a local shop for the base materials for our products. We decided to give each woman the option of embroidering either a set of four placemats or a bag with an embroidered flap. Each woman has the option to decide on her fabric color and product based on personal preference as well as the yarn that she already has at home, which she will be using for the embroidery. We decided on a deadline for the projects at two weeks.

Candelaria cutting the fabric

Picking out fabric colors with Anna

This morning the women came over to the meeting place at Dona Chonita’s (my neighbor here in Santiago), and we explained the products and design styles that we had decided for the first round of projects. At the end of the meeting, we distributed the fabric! 19 women came for the meeting. I can’t wait to see what the women come up with for the finished products in a couple of weeks!

My first fabric purchase

Bienvenidos a Santiago!

For an indigenous woman in Guatemala, even day-to-day life can be a constant challenge. The indigenous population makes up at least 60% of the country’s population, but their livelihood remains marginalized. According to my research for a paper for my graduate studies at the University of Denver, 87% of indigenous Guatemalans live in poverty and 61% live in extreme poverty (making less than $1.25 per day per person, according to the World Bank’s poverty measures). In indigenous communities where nine out of ten children under age five are malnourished, indigenous women are not only concerned about their own lives but also about the livelihoods of their families.

Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala is a small village of 40,000 residents located on Lago de Atitlán, the largest lake in Central America. 95% of the inhabitants are indigenous Mayans. The region was hit hard by the 36-year civil conflict in Guatemala from 1960-1996. The conflict and systematic marginalization of both women and indigenous people has left most of the women in Santiago Atitlán with very few marketable skills. Many women depend on artisan handicraft work to survive.

Approaching the docks at Santiago Atitlán, via boat from Panajachel

Women doing the day's washing 

Lago de Atitlán and Volcan San Pedro amongst the clouds

On our way to the market

I am spending the summer living in a homestay in Santiago Atitlán and working as the Project Development Intern for Natik, a U.S. based nonprofit that works together with community-based organizations in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico to transform marginalized communities through economic and educational empowerment.

Natik has been working in the Santiago Atitlán area since 2003. With Natik’s assistance, a group of 34 indigenous Mayan women have formed a microenterprise called Just Apparel in the community. Natik provides the materials for the handicraft work, and the women create beautiful woven handbags, tablecloths, pillowcases, and clothing from the thread. Once the items are sold, the women receive a portion of the profits, and a portion is retained for reinvestment. Additionally, a portion is allocated for a scholarship fund for secondary school for students in the community.

The Just Apparel scholarship fund has afforded at least 15 students with secondary school scholarships. Natik also operates The Puerta Abierta Biblioteca, which "offers creative learning opportunities to Santiago Atitlán children through preschool and kindergarten classes, after school enrichment programs, reading hours, homework help, and the traveling library, which spreads the joy of reading to the most remote parts of Santiago” (Natik.org, accessed June 1 2013).

A day of lessons at the Puerto Abierta Biblioteca

The biggest challenge facing the women of Santiago Atitlán is a lack of work for the artisans. The local tourist market for traditional embroidered goods is flooded, as there are too many women with the same skills and not enough local buyers. With such limited access to local markets to sell their artisan crafts, the women are forced to take on additional work that is often not paid at a fair, living wage.

My project in Santiago (as the locals shorten it) is to assist the cooperative of women to be able to earn a living wage through artisan craft sales by expanding the market for their crafts to include an international online marketplace. I will help with product design, pricing strategy, and website design for the Just Apparel website and online marketplace, as well as create and manage several other online portals such as an Etsy store. I will also be conducting in-house interviews with each of the women, working individually with each woman on her color preferences and embroidery styles in order to help her create and sell unique works of art. I will be writing short biographies of each woman in order to include information about the artist on a small card with each product when it is shipped to the consumer.

Meeting with some women in the cooperative at their homes to discuss fabrics

Monday was my first meeting with the women of the Just Apparel cooperative. At least 25 women came over to my neighbor’s house here in Santiago, and we sat in a big circle and talked about the next step for Just Apparel. I was introduced and we explained to the women that I will be working on the project for the next two months here in Santiago. The women were asked to bring over samples of their products so that we had an idea of what kind of skills the women already have, and how we could incorporate these skills into their future work with the cooperative.

The women of Just Apparel in our first group meeting

One of the examples of handwoven embroidery

The problem in this community isn’t the lack of desire to work but instead the lack of opportunity to work. I truly believe that this project has great potential for small-scale improvement in human livelihood, and I am looking forward to an incredibly rewarding summer!