Wardrobe Economics

In reflecting on an earlier post of mine about my teacher, Sabina, I’ve spent the past few days wondering whether perhaps I was too quick to jump to conclusions about her choice of dress. Suspicious that perhaps things were more complicated than they had seemed, I decided it might be a novel idea for me to actually ask Sabina why she doesn’t wear indigenous Mayan “traje” (clothing). Her response to my question soon turned into an hour-long discussion that confirmed my suspicions… when I wrote my blog post about indigenous Mayan culture and dress, I had no idea what I was talking about!

Imagine you are an indigenous Kaqchikel Maya woman like Sabina. If you go to your village market, the average price you can expect to pay for a new huipil (traditional Mayan shirt) is about 800 quetzales (~$110.00 U.S. dollars).

If, to cut costs, you decide to weave your own huipil on a backstrap loom like the one on the left, the average amount of money you will spend on materials is about 600 quetzales (~$80.00). Keep in mind, however, that to make this huipil will take you between 1 and 3 months, depending on how intricate the pattern is, and whether or not you have a day job.

If you can’t afford to weave your own, your next cheapest option is to buy a second-hand huipil at the village market. This will cost you about 300 quetzales (~$40.00).

Also don’t forget that you will also need to dress your bottom half. If you want to buy a new corte (traditional Mayan skirt), this will cost about 400 quetzales, (~$55.00). Second hand cortes run about 200 quetzales (~$30.00). As a woman, you will not know how to weave our own corte, because this type of fabric is traditionally woven by Mayan men, who use a different (much larger) loom called a treadle loom, shown on the right. According to Sabina, the loom for making cortes is operated by using both hands and your foot. Weaving fabric on this loom requires significant bending of the torso back and forth, left and right (which becomes difficult if not impossible if you are a Mayan woman with a sleeping baby strapped to your back). This offers an explanation for why Mayan girls learn to weave huipiles from their mothers, and Mayan boys learn to weave cortes from their fathers.

By comparison, the average price of a brand new western-style blouse or t-shirt sold in a Guatemalan village market is about 25 quetzales (~$3.50). If, to be frugal, you decide to buy it second hand, you can expect to pay about 10 quetzales (~$1.50).

When you stop to consider the fact that Guatemala is an impoverished country where the average per capita income is $2,400.00 (U.S. dollars), it quickly becomes clear why someone might choose a one-dollar t-shirt over a one-hundred-dollar huipil.