From our founding, our commitment remains to help the First Peoples of our region. This began in 1982 when Maya peoples from Guatemala fled violence in their homelands and sought refuge in Mexico.
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Unlike so many other stories of humanitarian crises around the world, this is a story with a happy ending. With the guidance of the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR), Mexico’ COMAR (Comision Mexicana de Ayuda a los Refugiados), was able to host more than 225,000 Maya refugees. The majority of these Guatemalan refugees hailed principally from the Guatemalan departments of Huehuetenango, El Quiché, El Petén and San Marcos. The initial displacement from Guatemala was to Chiapas States, which is geographically and culturally similar to Guatemala. The numbers of refugees in the 1980s, however, overwhelmed COMAR, and the Mexican government established the Permanent Commissions of Representatives of Guatemalan Refugees in Mexico (Comisiones Permanentes de Representantes de los Refugiados Guatemaltecos en Mexico), known as CCPP.
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By the end of the 1980s, Maya refugees were relocated to UNHCR camps in the states of Campeche and Quintana Roo, which are vastly different environments: tropical, warm and flat lowlands. Maya refugees encountered significant obstacles to adjusting to their new lands. This photograph, taken on June 27, 1988, shows a Guatemalan Maya family living in a refugee camp in Campeche State on their way to market aboard a COMAR bus, which operated with the support of Mesoamérica Foundation and the UNHCR. Our efforts in this humanitarian effort were to provide transportation, supplies for schools, and create markets for the colorful textiles which are part of the Highland Maya traditions.
Our work helped the Highland Maya adjust to life among the Lowland Maya. In fact, it was during this time, we developed outreach programs to market textiles and weavings by the Maya peoples of Guatemala, Chiapas and Campeche, providing initial contacts with U.S. and Canadian organizations, and then to provide logistical support for organizations such as Pueblo-to-People in Houston which marketed these textiles. It was in the late 1980s and 1990s that the Highland Maya aesthetics became popular among U.S. college students, Maya weavings as bracelets, belts and knapsacks found wide acceptance among many young American and Canadian youth who championed the human rights of the First Peoples across the hemisphere.
On October 8, 1992, after four years of negotiation, the Basic Accord for Repatriation was signed between Guatemala and Mexico’s CCPP.
This began a progress of voluntary repatriation that continues to this day, with almost all of Guatemala’s First Peoples who sought refuge in Mexico well on their way to reestablishing and rebuilding their lives in their homelands.
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Our work throughout the region, moreover, helped to popularize the Maya aesthetics to consumers in the United States, Canada and beyond, providing a source of income for the Maya women who created these weavings, and their families.
In this effort we helped such organizations as Pueblo-to-People in Houston, Texas create markets for these products. We subsequently helped source artisans for such organizations as Global Exchange in San Francisco, California and “Fair Trade” shops in Spain, Italy and France. When Guatemalan families returned to their homeland, they took with them an average of $2,200 USD in savings.
We continued our work in California despite hostility against us by certain elements within the San Francisco community who challenged in court our right to defend the civil rights of Latinos in that city.
This decade, our efforts have focused on creating opportunities for Maya women throughout the region to create weavings and related products that appeal to the hundreds of thousands of visitors that, because of resorts along the Maya Riviera, from Cancun in the north to Playa del Carmen in the south, flock to region.
It is reaching these customers, who are here on holiday and to trips of adventure, which we hope to create sustainable incomes that compensate the Maya producers fairly and justly. Our goal is to create sustainable markets for sustainable products, work with Fair Trade shops, and nurture demand among the public for traditional weavings of the Maya. This includes, in Yucatan State, of helping to revitalize the henequen, or sisal, weavings for reusable, everyday items, such as shopping bags and area rugs.
Taking what we learned in the 1990s, when we actively supported humanitarian efforts to help First Peoples who sought refuge in the United States, helping various organizations in California and Texas that were part of the Sanctuary Movement, we are working with Maya women cooperatives throughout the region that are creating the highest-quality products, unrivaled in skill and craftsmanship.
It is through helping Maya families increase their standard of livings that we believe we can best secure their economic rights and empower them in society.
We invite you to join us by becoming a Green Member.
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| Henequen (Sisal) Plant |
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Beginning in 2009 we will make available these reusable shopping bags made of henequen (sisal) fiber – completely natural, decorated with biodegradable dyes, and in keeping with our Green Commitment … Make a statement, whether you shop at the local farmers’ market, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, your neighborhood greengrocer … or even some other kind of market!
To learn more about these wonderful shopping bags, send us an email by clicking on the image of the henequen (sisal) plant, above left.
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