Author: Emma Lodes
Tucked among the funky cafes and thrift stores that line Colorado Boulevard, Tapestries Natural Life is an explosion of color and texture. Open and airy, the shop gives off the feeling of a modern fashion boutique. Rainbows of Guatemalan clay beads drape from sculpted tree figurines, and intricately patterned tapestries hang in organized rows under arching ceilings.
But the products Tapestries Natural Life sells are far from modern. In fact, its Guatemalan artisan crafts are traditional Mayan weavings and jewelry, whose roots go back thousands of years. Each product is hand-made by indigenous and impoverished Mayans deep in the remote highlands of Guatemala. Ingrid Del Cid and Rick Green, the owners and masterminds behind Tapestries Natural Life, are pouring their hearts into supporting the Guatemalan Mayans and their culture.
“Our store is an invitation for people to explore and appreciate the Mayan world without being afraid of it,” Green said. “The Mayan culture didn’t disappear. The problem is the educated class disrespect and ignore them, but the Mayans are the real treasure of [Guatemala].”
Walking into Tapestries Natural Life, one would not expect that the store is only five months old.
“We were talking for a long time about doing a business that can help the Mayan people sustain their lives,” Green said. “We were shopping in Guatemala and started talking to people, just buying gifts really. Then we were buying items to bring up here… playing with the idea. In the last year, we got motivated to open the store and put it all together.”
Mayans can maintain their culture, improve their standard of living and continue to do what they know and love best: weave. Textile weaving is crucial to the life of Mayans in the highlands and drives their local economies. Each town in the highlands specializes in a specific design that they have done for thousands of years.
“Weaving is the main source of the women’s income. It sustains their way of life and allows them to hold on to cultural identity,” Green said.
Del Cid and Green cannot always pick out textiles themselves, so they send money to Guatemalan friends to pick out products and send them to the U.S. The big tourist seasons are Christmas and Easter, and during the slow seasons the weavers’ connection to Tapestries Natural Life makes a big difference.
Del Cid is Guatemalan and Green is from Los Angeles. They have been married for five years. Del Cid came to the United States after divorcing her abusive husband and was forced to leave her kids behind. Her own experience in Guatemala inspired her to help impoverished Mayan women.
“I realized that indigenous women don’t have money to bring their kids to the hospital, and I want to make a change for them,” Del Cid said. “My dream is to help these women, so they can have a better life and to make change in their lives.”
To the Mayans, tourism is a curse and a blessing
Today, the market for Mayan textiles revolves around tourism, but traditionally Mayans were traders and would travel to other regions in Central America to exchange goods.
Everything changed in the 1500s when the first tourists set foot in Guatemala: the Spanish conquistadors. Mayan women who wove skirts but wore no shirts were forced to cover their breasts, so they started making “huipiles”—the woven shirts that are the stereotypical Guatemalan uniform today. Huipiles take six to eight months to weave, and the women wear them for up to 10 years. Guatemalan women can get $80 to $100 for an item, and that money can feed the family for an entire month. Tourists who collect these textiles now come from all over the world.
“The Mayans are completely dependent on the tourist business today,” Green said. “If the shirts take four to 10 months to weave, they could never have commensurate value. They’re working at a really base level.”
But lately, the flow of tourists is thinning due to the downturn in the world economy and heightened drug violence in the Guatemalan highlands. The short tourist season puts enormous pressure on the women to find new markets. According to Green, textile sales have gone down by 20 percent in the last few decades.
The Mayans are also under pressure from modernization.
“They like modernization, but they also want to do what they like to do, which is weave,” Green said. “So they’re on a tightrope the entire time.”
According to Del Cid and Green, promoting the weavings is the key to empowering Guatemalan women in a sustainable way while simultaneously encouraging them to maintain their culture and their way of life.
“Nothing else is gonna do it,” Green said. “It’s a spectacular talent that no one can copy. You can’t get the designs on a computer. They’re pieces of art. It’s in their blood, and they’ve had it for thousands of years, and they need it. Without it, everything falls apart for them.”
Health care and Micro-lending
In addition to the store, Del Cid and Green are looking to start a fund in which 10 percent of proceeds from their products go to health care and micro-lending for impoverished Guatemalans. During one of their trips to Guatemala, the pair worked in a hospital as translators for Doctors Without Borders. There, they witnessed immeasurable injustices due to lack of health care funding.
Through micro-lending, women can receive loans for emergency health care. For example, they can pay for an ambulance, a foreign concept to most mountain dwelling Mayans.
“They carry their babies to get help for hours,” Green said. “I saw one [woman] with four one day. Two that could walk, and two she was carrying with her arms. You see things you can’t believe. Since the country is so poor, there’s nothing to fall back on. There’s just not a lot of help for them.”
According to Green, investing in women is the best way to lift indigenous communities out of extreme poverty.
“Micro-lending gives poorest of the poor a chance to have a dream and move towards it and support themselves,” Green said.
A Celebration of Mayan Culture
Micro-lending and health care are future goals, and for now, Del Cid and Green are concentrating on expanding Tapestries Natural Life. When discussing the name of their store, Green says that it may be cheesy, but the couple did put serious thought into it.
“The ‘tapestries’ part is about life itself and culture—how we form sort of a tapestry,” Green said. “It’s the excitement of people when they travel and get to experience other cultures. They feel like so much more a part of the world instead of staying in a bubble.”
The “natural life” part refers to the products which are made by hand without taking too much from the earth.
“Mayans really care for the earth,” Green said. “It’s a sacrifice they make because of that history that they carry and the pride that they carry with it.”
Tapestries Natural Life is a celebration of Mayan culture and a celebration of the natural world. By instilling the idea of Mayan artistry as fashion in the minds of Angelenos, Del Cid and Green hope that they can carve out a sustainable market to sell Guatemalan weavings and jewelry. Artisan shops for indigenous crafts such as Sunset or Ten Thousand Villages are no new invention. But Del Cid and Green are doing something different.
“We want to pull it out from being a donation or support thing,” Green said. “It’s nice for people to support us for charity reasons, but the products themselves can stand on their own.”
The success of the store is deeply personal to Del Cid, as her whole family is still in Guatemala.
“I miss my family, but I’m really satisfied with what I’m doing here,” Del Cid said. “I can’t make a change in Guatemala, but I can make a change here. I know for sure it’s going to be a change for my kids.”
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