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Voices and images: Mayan Ixil women of Chajul
Chapter Three: Women and their daily life
4. Searching for income for the family
The work that the artisan is doing is difficult because the process of making baskets is very time-consuming. First he has to go into the mountains for 15 days to look for long, flexible reeds and willow branches. He has to take his food and blankets with him, and also his machete and knife for cutting the reeds. Since they are long, he rolls them up to be able to carry them.
When he returns home with the load of reeds, he begins to wash them and dry them in the sun on top of the house for three days. When they are dried, he cuts off the thick stems. When everything is ready, he begins making the basket, first positioning the willow branches to give the basket the form he wants it to have. Being artisans is the work of our ancestors, in the same way they were farmers. That is why their children too are artisans and farmers.
He is making mud bricks to sell so that he can earn a living. He’s hoping that his mud bricks dry as quickly as possible so that he can start to sell them. This work will take a long time because for the bricks to dry he has to turn them so the sun can dry them on both sides. And once they are dry, he has to pick them up and stack them so that the rain won’t get them wet.
He is very worried because he and his wife never had a family. He and she are alone and he is worried about the house, which doesn’t belong to him. It is very difficult to buy a house with this type of work. He was left as an orphan when he was quite young. His parents died of illness and he was always very poor. He has fewer problems in life now because he is working to survive, but his greatest concern is not having children when he is old and advanced in years, because he won’t have anyone to take care of him.
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