MEXICO: Native Craftswomen Harness Their Skills

• by Emilio Godoy (mexico city)
• Friday, January 21, 2011
• Inter Press Service

The 32-year-old Carrillo, a member of the Kumeyaay Native American people, belongs to the Grupo de Artesanos Nativos de Baja California (Group of Native Craftspeople of Baja California), which was founded in 2004 and has more than 140 members from the Kumeyaay, Paipai, Kiliwa and Cucapá communities in that northwestern Mexican state.

'Before, the craftspeople had to wait for someone to visit their community to buy their products,' said Kumeyaay Indian Javier Ceceña, director of the non-profit Native Cultures Institute of Baja California, which provides backing for the group of craftspersons.

'They would wait for a long time until someone would finally show up and buy their products at a really low price. So we organised,' he told IPS.

The Grupo de Artesanos Nativos de Baja California is one illustration of how Amerindian groups in Mexico are using their craftmaking skills and traditions to defend their cultures and earn incomes to improve their living conditions.

And in the town of El Tajín in the southeastern state of Veracruz, Totonaca Indians joined together in 2006 to perfect their work and improve the marketing and sales of their products, and thus boost their family incomes.

'The aim was to get these women to understand that they are great artists with the skills to produce wonderful products, but that in order to push ahead, they needed someone who had a broader vision and could see a little farther, and they needed to sell in other markets with which they were unfamiliar and to which they had no access,' Jessica Ramos, commercial representative of Cerámica de El Tajín, told IPS.

The Cerámica project consists of four family-run pottery workshops where 25 people -- mainly women — work. In fact, one of the conditions is that each workshop must be headed by a woman.

Both the Grupo de Artesanos Nativos de Baja California and the Cerámica de El Tajín are keeping alive artistic traditions passed down from generation to generation, and use raw materials available in their communities.

From the ancestral knowledge and the hands of the Baja California artisans emerge baskets, pottery, bows and arrows, belts, sashes, bags, purses, necklaces, frames, and decorative ornaments, while the Totonaca ceramicists make serving dishes, pots, candlesticks, planters, jars, pitchers and many other products.

Mexico is the Latin American country with the largest indigenous population, variously estimated to make up between 12 and 30 percent of the country’s 110 million people (the smaller, official, estimate is based on the number of people who actually speak an indigenous language).The rest of the population is mainly of mixed Amerindian and Spanish ancestry.

In Baja California, there are a mere 2,000 indigenous people, out of a total estimated population of three million.

'Our ancestors did not see these activities merely as crafts,' said Ceceña. 'You can't find these styles in any other state. We now have the opportunity for older people to train the youths, and thus preserve age old techniques and teach people about our culture.'

The Native Cultures Institute of Baja California, which was founded in 1992 by U.S. anthropologist Michael Wilken, has launched projects in the areas of health, education, culture and sustainable development in the state, including scholarships for 250 indigenous students.

In December, the Grupo de Artesanos Nativos de Baja California shared the National Science and Arts Prize in the category of Popular Art and Traditions, awarded by the Mexican government, with a group of indigenous embroiderers in the southern state of Chiapas. The prize included a money award of 48,000 dollars.

'It has been a huge benefit for the women to work together and see things improve for the common good,' said Ramos, whose Cerámica de El Tajín enterprise has received support from the Tenaris Tamsa company, a steel pipe producer in Mexico, and from the Escuela Mexicana de Cerámica (Mexican School of Ceramics).

'They are no longer alone, and they don't have to work and face the future on their own. As a group, their voice is stronger,' she added.

The craftspeople exhibit and sell their products at regional fairs. Last year, the Totonaca artisans sold more than 800 pieces, earning some 48,000 dollars.

The National Fund for the Promotion of Handicrafts (FONART), which forms part of the Ministry of Social Development, plans to make more products available online.

The Ministry will also send Congress a bill aimed at strengthening the promotion of crafts and defending the handicrafts industry from piracy. The draft law was drawn up with contributions from craftspeople's associations.

'Our challenge is to make the group more cohesive, and train the community to produce better quality products,' said Ceceña. 'We want people to buy our products for their quality, not out of a sense of charity, and so we can live in more dignified conditions.'

The Grupo de Artesanos Nativos is about to receive a marketing study carried out by the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous Peoples, which will provide information on how to improve administration, production, commercialisation and sales of their crafts.

Last year Cerámica de El Tajín exported its products for the first time: some 40 pieces to an exhibit in the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, where most of the works were sold.

'We want them to branch out into the design of new pieces, to introduce them into the art market. It's a huge qualitative leap,' said Ramos, who predicted that the workshops could become self-sustainable this year.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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