Amy Maxwell and Dr. Ruth Toulson, Anthropology
Guatemala has a rich indigenous heritage which has attracted the attention of researchers for over 75 years. This culture includes 21 indigenous Maya language groups scattered throughout the country. The civil war ended ten years ago and since then, the country has been healing. As the country has welcomed progress, it has also welcomed tourists from around the globe who come for the culture or to study Spanish. In the face of so many national changes, the Mayan culture is shifting and adapting.
The growth of tourism has created a new demand for cultural products. Visitors come from around the globe to learn Spanish, see the beautiful landscape and the rich Maya culture. Part of the attraction of this group of people is their crafts. The market has therefore become inundated with crafts from all over Guatemala. In the tourist market, products are also mass produced in China, pushing the demand for local hand-made products down. The local artisan also has to sell his crafts at a low price to middlemen who have the resources to obtain a booth in the prime tourist areas. Because of these two factors, high supply and middlemen, the artisan makes only a small profit on goods, if any. This problem has created innovations across the country to ease the burden on the indigenous artisan.
My research this summer was based in Santa Maria La Visitación and Santa Clara La Laguna. Santa Maria and Santa Clara are located close to Lake Atitlán, one of the most popular tourist destinations in Guatemala, but the towns themselves were not dedicated to the making of goods for the tourist market. I set out this summer to examine tourist areas, specifically the transference and perception of culture to and by those who were outside of it. Globalization is a heavily studied subject in Anthropology, and I wanted to study the perceptions of cultural crafts by the artisans that make them and the foreign consumers that buy them. As my research progressed, this original research question changed due to the location in which I found myself and the work specific to that area. After doing some general research on the artesanía (handicrafts or artistry) of the area, I chose to look closer at goods that were not all designed specifically for tourists only but were headed to markets in distant areas some of which were heavily visited by tourists and other Maya or non-Maya (ladinos). I was still able to look at globalization and outside influences that are affecting the daily lives of the people in these communities through their making of baskets.
The basket is an important part of the lives of the people of Santa Maria and Santa Clara. For Santa Clara, making baskets is a tradition rooted in their history and part of their identity as Clareños, but this traditional work has undergone a shift in style and purpose. The main market for their cane baskets was always the coffee plantations in the coastal regions that bought baskets for use at harvest time. Because of the introduction of plastic baskets, the price of the cane basket dropped drastically. For Santa Maria basket making is a lost art that has been recently reintroduced in different forms. Upon seeing this distinction, I started looking more at why these style or material changes exist and why people are still making baskets. What influences are coming into the communities and how does the change in basket making reflect those influences? What is the motivation for making baskets for the people, and where do they get their ideas? In order to answer these questions, I spent time with artisans and basket makers in the two communities, learning their crafts and interviewing them about their work.
As part of the post-war growth, the country has also welcomed support from international development groups that have capitalized on the global market for crafts and the problem of the local artisan. First of all, in Santa Maria, Creciendo Bien, a subset of SOSEP, the first lady’s social program has funded a workshop that teaches the making of bamboo baskets for sale in the national market. An international group from Finland held a contest about five years ago for the most original new craft idea made from a natural, local resource. A woman named Lucia from Santa Maria entered her design for pine needle baskets and won money to teach other women in her community with the aim that this would become a new local craft. In Santa Clara, basket weavers asked for help from an organization called FUNDAP that specializes in development in rural areas. Together, they created Copik’aj, a cooperative for basket weavers which specializes in different styles of cane basket for export.
Many of the citizens of the two communities make baskets and do other forms of artesanía in order to provide for their families by supplementing income. There were those who learned different types of artesanía for enjoyment. In the case of the basket weavers of Santa Clara, they wove not only because they had to eat, but because it was tradition. This artesanía was the work of their fathers, so they are keeping it alive by adjusting it to fit the demand of the day. They praise their new form of basket weaving in local celebrations and to the tourists that visit the community. In Santa Maria, the baskets that they are learning may or may not be passed down to the next generation, but they are taking on the identity of their crafts in the markets today in order to provide for their families. As well as coming to understand the basket makers of the communities, I was able to understand better the economic decisions that people in the area make and what options are available to them.
My methods were primarily qualitative. My major focus was placed on participant observation and unstructured interviews. I spent a great deal of time working with weavers, basket makers, and embroiderers. As my research narrowed, I interviewed members of a bamboo basket group including the instructor as well as doing a focus group with a pine needle basket group. In order to get a good overview of the nature of the cane basket-making, I interviewed craftsmen both young and old, those who are still making the traditional form of the basket and those who are making different styles.
Even though I discovered a great deal about their concepts of tradition and how they are incorporating new ideas into local identity, I still am lacking some key data that I hope to collect when I return to Guatemala this next summer. I failed to get substantial data on the flow of the basket in and out of Santa Clara even though I do have a general idea of the process. I also wanted to distribute a survey in Santa Clara, but was unable to because of time constraints.