Maya Weaver and View of Weaving from Below

While the toad signs at the mouth of the Earthlord's mountain cave, the Earthlord's daughters prepare cotton, which will be transformed by a bolt of lightning into rain clouds. The scorpion is introduced into their midst to prick the lightning into action. The cotton huipil, perfectly animated, draws the powers that bring life-sustaining rain. The Maya Traditions. Photographs Jeffery Jay Foxx 1999

For centuries, it had been believed that the culture of the Maya was lost. Their hieroglyphic books, except for a few sent to Europe as "curiosities," were destroyed by the Spanish conquest. Even earlier, their great cities had collapsed. Their temples and palaces had fallen into ruins. However, distinctive clothing, a mark of communal identity, still flourishes among the Maya in Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico. It constitutes a cultural memory reaching back to the period of the classic Maya cities. There, royalty were depicted in stone wearing garments with the same patterns that women still weave today. Research by Walter F. Morris, Jr., an independent scholar, has revealed that Maya women, weaving on simple backstrap looms, have continually worked with designs that express an ancient Maya mythology.

A culture's symbolic imagery is subject to change with the course of time as well as with the influences of outside of forces. One of the most significant outside forces that drastically altered Maya textiles is the Spanish Conquest, which brought about the invasion of Western life into "traditional" Maya culture. The rather recent invasion of tourism and commercial markets have also influenced both the technical and aesthetic traits of Maya textiles. In spite of the present changes that have occurred over the last millennium, the Maya of today continue to weave and embroider some of the same design motifs that have been popular since the Classic period (AD 150-900).

Although Classic period textiles are scarce due to poor preservation conditions, images on polychrome ceramics, lintels, stelae, and wall murals reveal design motifs used in textiles.Today, weaving has become a cornerstone in the economic survival of both households and villages. Although cultural contact has influenced many of the techniques and ancestral cosmology and symbolism still found in weavings of the Maya.

Internet Links

Woven Voices: Textile Traditions of the Highland Maya

Textile Art of Chiapas

Weaving and Textile Arts of the Maya Today

Daughters of the Earthlord: Lesson Plan (PDF File)