Do textiles speak? In 2012, I organized a workshop (subsequently published as a special issue of Ethnohistory) on Indigenous Mesoamerican literacy, supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and generously hosted and further supported by the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. Much of the lively discussions during the workshop focused on the many modalities of literacy, including the particular eloquence of textiles. Judith Maxwell wrote a vivid article about the pre-contact period to present changes in literacy and literature in Highland Guatemala that emphasized weaving and textile textual literacy.
For example, Highland Maya textile designs employ Maya conventions of registers for ordering the textual narrative. Joyce Bennett takes up this important theme of communication and meaning in Maya communities and adds a valuable emphasis on gender and activism. She thoughtfully examines the form and content of crucial messages about social identity that undergird moral and social values and powerful activism. Bennett identifies the linguistic phenomena of “clasps” (identification) and “relays” (signposts) in insightful snippets of dialogue. The primary evidence is qualitative participant observation, complemented by secondary evidence provided by a survey to assess the degree of support from communities for women's clothing and language revitalization efforts. I was surprised to see a detailed description of research methodologies for investigating language and clothing revitalization in an appendix rather than with the discussion of methodologies in the Introduction (18-22).
In Part 1, readers get to meet Brenda (Chapter 1) and Lucia and Melinda (Chapter 2), as well as a few other people who are introduced to a more limited extent. In the main sites of research, the small town of Santa Caterina Palopó, the larger city of San Juan Comalapa, and larger still Tecpán, goodness within Kaqchikel communities is intimately associated with speaking Kaqchikel and wearing traje, actions that ladinos usually shun themselves and subvert in others. Bennett is careful not to recapitulate ladino rejection by interpreting Kaqchikel women's choices as subject to inexorable, hegemonic neoliberal forces; instead, she listens to the women, who have resisted racism, oppression, and marginalization through conscious, dedicated work to revitalize their language (Chapter 3) and clothing (Chapter 4). The balance Bennett strikes throughout is to recognize both structural and symbolic violence and Maya women's bravery, strength, and ingenuity—in short, their humanity.
Re-centering the focus on the women's experiences foregrounds the sensory: making visible, amplifying sound, registering movement. The starting place of an individual's everyday actions blurs lines between public and private; speaking, wearing, and moving are simultaneously personal, political, hopeful, and defiant in every setting. The reader gets to see the women and their vibrant world. Vivid full-color photographs of women wearing their traje and of a brightly painted refurbished bus testify to the potent role of color, pattern, and form in Kaqchikel life.
These patterns and colors also involved texture. Women describe the pleasing heft and quality of the uq and p'ot versus a nearly naked feeling when wearing ladino style clothing. Bennett's work is remarkable because of her command of the Kaqchikel language and her prioritizing of space in the text for women of different constituencies of Kaqchikel communities to express themselves. The main text is just 115 pages, a fair proportion of which consists of quotes in Kaqchikel, Spanish, or a mix of the two, and their English translations. I felt as though I got the opportunity to hear these women's voices.
The movement of the women in the book is an example of migration within the developing world. Bennett records the steep physical, economic, and emotional demands of internal migration. Some women moved in circuits that would increase their economic rewards, yet income was not always the deciding factor. Sometimes, women chose migratory labor paths to lessen pressures to diminish their indigeneity. Although structural violence pushes Kaqchikel women into migration, their movement did not weaken their indigeneity, but instead made it strong, fortifying their chuq'a (personal strength). Bennett shows that hearing, seeing, and respecting Kaqchikel women can forge a path toward important new insights.
