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Voices and images: Mayan Ixil women of Chajul
Chapter Three: Women and their daily life
13. Mutual help
The woman is so happy because after having lived for so many years without her own house, she has now received this assistance from the people to build her own house. The woman worked hard to obtain this help. She had to petition aid from the Asociación Chajulense. They donated all the house materials to her: the mud bricks, the roof tiles, and the beams. The brethren of her church did the construction work for her. These men and women in the photo are sisters and brothers of the charismatic Catholic religion and they are undertaking a charitable work by helping the woman with her the house. She is very poor, but the rest of the people are showing their solidarity with her.
The Ixil custom is for the men to let other men know what day the house raising will occur, so that they all come to help with the building. Many men come so that the work can be finished in a single day and they aren’t paid. However, because they do the work without charge, the woman who owns the house invites them all to a good lunch.
The women help out with the task of carrying the roof tiles and by preparing the meal, which consists of meat stew and tamalitos of cooked, ground corn. They are not paid for this work so that’s why they take a small basket of tamalitos and a little meat stew home with them for their families.
A brief history of the woman:
She was left without a father from a very young age. Her mother took charge of supporting her; her father was killed in the mountains during the war. Eventually, she married and she and her husband lived very happily for eleven years with their two children. But recently her husband passed away and she was left a widow.
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