Partners: Weaving for Justice

23rd Feb 2025

Mexicolore contributor Christine Eber

Since the beginning of 2023 Mexicolore has supported and partnered with Weaving for Justice, an all-volunteer, non-profit organisation working in solidarity with Maya weaving collectives in Chiapas, Mexico. By buying small weavings hand woven by weavers in Mexico and gifting them to the schools we work with in England, we hope to contribute in a tiny way to assisting the members of the collectives to continue living on their ancestral lands in sustainable ways that respect their lands, language (Tsotsil), and traditions. Weaving for Justice co-founder Christine Eber sets the scene...

Tsobol Antsetik (Women United) is a collective of twenty-five women weavers and embroiderers from the municipality of Chenalho’ in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. When the collective formed over thirty years ago, the members were involved in the Zapatista movement and Las Abejas (The Bees) an organization of Catholics in Chenalho’ in solidarity with Zapatista principles, including creating economies of solidarity in which everyone benefits from local resources, rather than a few people becoming wealthy at others’ expense.

The members of the collective are in what they call “The Resistance.” This means that they do not receive government support, believing that it has been used in the past to buy their submission. Instead, they sell their artisan work and other products through networks of solidarity within churches and civil society organizations, such as Weaving for Justice.
Today, the daughters and granddaughters of the founders continue working alongside their mothers and grandmothers. They weave on back-strap looms, huipils that they wear and make for export as well as items such as book marks, cell phone bags, table runners, and napkin and placemat sets.

Napkins were one of the first items the weavers made for sale in the U.S. In the late 1980s, anthropologist Christine Eber and her friend, Carol Charnley, joined forces in Buffalo, New York to help the weavers develop products that would sell in the U.S., including the napkin and placemat set. The placemat is a replica of the striped tortilla cloth used in Chenalho’ and the napkins feature brocaded designs with deep ancestral significance. Designs include a woman, a holy toad, a corn plant, the plumed serpent, K’uk’ulkan, and the Maya cosmogram. Over the years, this set of napkins and placemats has become one of the most popular products the weavers make.

Weaving for Justice has its roots in the work that Christine and Carol began in the 1980s. Over the years, students who Christine has met in her teaching as well as members of the communities where she has lived, have joined her to help the weavers sell their work. Weaving for Justice was the result of these efforts which continue with the weavers of Tsobol Antsetik as well as eleven other weaving and embroidery collectives in Chiapas.

Photos courtesy of Weaving for Justice; thanks to Pancha Pérez Pérez.

Mexicolore notes:-
Here are the first schools to have received napkins woven by Maya women, thanks to Weaving for Justice:-
• Buckhurst Hill Primary School, Essex
• Edmund Waller Primary School, SE London
• Freegrounds Junior School, Southampton
• Sacred Heart RC Primary School, Ruislip
• St. Peter’s & St. Paul’s RC Primary School, Essex
• Wood End School, Harpenden
• Heathlands CE Primary School, West Bergholt, Essex
• Yerbury Primary School, London
• Dulwich Hamlet Junior School, London
• High Beeches Primary School, Harpenden
• Ferndown Middle School, Dorset
Our thanks to all.