HISTORY OF THE ASSOCIATION  

 

    

 

As it is well know nationally and internationally, Guatemala is a country, in which human living conditions are very hard, as a result of the lack of mechanisms that facilitate social and communitarian participation.

On February the 4th, 1976 an earthquake destroyed everything in its path and devastated all the population of San José Poaquil. Four years later, started the 36 year national armed conflict that was particularly suffered by the people of our municipality.

 

 

    
 

With the armed conflict that took place throughout the 1980’s, San Jose Poaquil, the municipality where the group of women is located, held a population that was strategically used by the army and the guerrilla, due to its known geographic location as a passageway as it is portrayed in “Guatemala No More” and in “Memory of Silence”

San Jose Poaquil was one of the municipalities included on the “Devastated Earth Policy” characterized by it’s genocide filled ideology and where the repression carried on by the army and members of the so called “Civil Self-Defence Patrols”, forced a great number of widows to migrate to the capital or the south of the country.

  
       
 

As a result of the armed conflict, and after the violent and forced disappearance of the men of the municipality, many women became widows and many children became orphans. Since most of the houses and crops were destroyed, a large number of people decided to flee to the farms of the south, only to find themselves living in new forms of exploitation and dependence.

According to the testimony of a woman that can be found in a diagnosis made recently by the National Union of Women of Guatemala, 88% of the women of this municipality became widows as a direct consequence of the armed conflict. This has had a psycho-social impact in the life of the women and their families, leading to a change in the family structures, as most of the women had to suddenly assume the leading supporting role of their homes.

 
       
 

Before this situation, and as strategy of survival, five determined and brave women decided to organize themselves and to work in the textile crafts, in the middle of threats and persecutions made by the army. In order to create the association, they had to count on the permission of the military commandant of the detachment located in the municipality, or on the approval of the Head of the Civil Self-Defence Patrols of the communities.

The association, under the encouragement of the Scholastic Sisters of San Francisco, was founded on the 12 of December of 1983 by widows, orphans and women that fled the rural communities towards the district’s capital. The group initially dedicated themselves to the elaboration of waist-woven tissues, which was the only work that they could do on their homes, and at the same time, they were taking care of their children and attending the necessities of all the family.

The aim of the association was to develop and look for new ways to sell the weaves in the national or international market. Thanks to the hard work and dedication that was put into the activities, the group not only strengthened itself but also grew in number of members.

Little by little, through the active participation of the members in the organization, we not only managed to bring our efforts and ideas together, but we also began to be more independent as we started to make our own designs and to develop our own market. Thanks to the revenues that we were able to gather, we could assure our homes food supply.  This has proved that women can be self-sufficient and independent, which has been one of the biggest achievements that we have had as an association.

Tejidos Guadalupe was recognized on August 24th 2004 as Cooperative and has a communitarian, independent approach that struggles for the integral well-being of families through the promotion of the Mayan peoples traditional and cultural values, with the objective of improving the quality of life of those who are part of the organization.

 
       
  MISSION    

 

 

To develop a process of qualification that allows indigenous kaqchikel women to promote, modernize and specialize their textile production, that can help them achieve an integral development and improve their quality of life.

 
       
  VISION    
       

 

To be a leading institution, with national and international recognition, compromised with the integral development of the indigenous kaqchikel Mayan women, the family unit, and the society in general throughout projects and programs that may contribute in the construction of a nation based on unity, equality, dignity and humanitarian values.

  
 
 

OBJECTIVE

  
 

 

To promote the integral personal growth throughout projects of social and economical nature, and by the training and capacity building of the human resources in order to improve  the collective, financial and cultural development of the beneficiaries and the population’s quality of life.

  
     
 
  VALUES
 
 

We promote the very own values of the kaqchikel Mayan culture. We believe that the stories and experiences passed on by the elder are a great source of knowledge that is crucial to the practice of the ancestral values of love, gratitude, respect and compliance, which hold our most dignified and sublime beliefs.