Readying the beans for storage

Voices and images: Mayan Ixil women of Chajul

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Three: Women and their daily life

8. Readying the beans for storage

During harvest time, the women of Chajul go into the fields to harvest beans. They dry them in the sun, ready them for storage, and for later sale so they will have money for the rest of the year. The boys and girls thresh the beans so the women will be able to take the shells off more easily. When they don’t harvest or sow beans, they don’t have money for their expenses and they have to buy their beans.

Formerly the bean harvest used to be pretty good because the beans depended on the strength of the land alone and it was entirely natural, but now they are grown with chemical fertilizer because they are planted alongside the corn so that the vine will curl around the corn stalk. Since fertilizer is used on the cornfield, the corn and beans are fertilized together. We want people to put into practice their training in the use of organic fertilizer so that our harvest of corn, beans, and other products we harvest will be more natural.