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🇵🇾 Paraguay /Culture & Society

Tsotsil artisans create catalog to defend Mexican textiles from major brands

From ABC Color · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

In-depth Named sources Context piece
  • The Jolom Mayaetik cooperative has documented 208 textile motifs from San Andrés Larráinzar through a catalog based on Tsotsil women's worldview.
  • Artisans say recording the designs and their meanings is necessary to defend them against copying by international brands and companies.
  • The catalog has ISBN protection for the research, but Mexican law still leaves gaps in protecting the motifs themselves, including internationally.

Tsotsil women artisans in Mexico are turning documentation into a defense against cultural appropriation. Through the Jolom Mayaetik cooperative, they have recovered the names, meanings and elements of their textile iconography and compiled 208 designs from San Andrés Larráinzar.

The catalog aims to preserve the ancestral knowledge of the community and its connection to the worldview of Tsotsil women. Juana Pérez, an artisan and coordinator of the collection, said the designs were recovered from San Andrés Larráinzar and had been passed down through generations.

All the designs we have here were recovered from San Andrés Larráinzar. They are closely connected to our lives and our culture, and they have been passed down from generation to generation.

· Juana PérezThe artisan described the community and cultural roots of the textile designs.

Elizabeth García Hernández, a member of Jolom Mayaetik, said documentation was essential to any defense. "To register an iconography, a design or any cultural expression, we first have to write it down and investigate it, because we cannot defend something that has not been written down," she said.

To register an iconography, a design or any cultural expression, we first have to write it down and investigate it, because we cannot defend something that has not been written down.

· Elizabeth García HernándezShe explained why the cooperative is documenting the motifs.

The catalog has ISBN protection through Mexico's National Institute of Copyright, but that protection covers the research rather than necessarily the iconography inside it. García Hernández said the group has a sample of more than 300 motifs, but lacks the financial and human resources needed to document the rest.

The challenge extends beyond record-keeping. Rosalinda Sánchez Díaz of the Center for Training and Education for Women said Mexican law still contains gaps over plagiarism and cultural appropriation. A 2022 law established mechanisms to protect the cultural expressions of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples, but she said implementation obstacles remain and secondary regulations are still missing. The protection also applies only within Mexico, not internationally.

We do not want them to take the designs or for international brands and companies to keep copying them. However, nothing guarantees full protection either.

· Rosalinda Sánchez DíazShe described the continuing legal risks facing Indigenous textile designs.
About this summary

Originally published by ABC Color in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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