Xeavaj

It's about high time I write about what's going on with my classes.

Let's do the hardest one first: Xeavaj. This class was my favorite in the beginning, and then had a big downward spiral halfway through, and now I don't want to continue classes there at all. All I can really say is that this is an example of a community that has been spoiled by the relief organizations that come through and just give things away. So they receive, receive, receive, and then lose interest in working for anything when they know they can beg it out of somebody. I didn't realize it at first, but after a couple heavy conversations with Lupe, that's what's going on. Hurricane Stan wiped out the village, and HSP and a lot of other places helped rebuild them, and Americans still go back handing crap out.

So here's what's happened. I had that terrible class about a month or two ago where some strange boy asked me to marry him, Marta was putting it on heavy for me to give her my materials, and then they tried to pressure sell me a huipil that I didn't think I agreed to buy. After that they laid off on the selling, and I tried to have my class as efficiently as possible. The girls in my class trickled down to 3, Marta and Pascuala were always always there, Marty screwing things up and taking advantage of her time with me to try to get me to buy her stuff, and Pascuala silently working in her peaceful little way. Then the third or sometimes fourth girl changed every week. Sometimes Francisca, or Maria, or Juana. And every time one of these women would join me they hadn't been to a class in weeks and I'd have to reteach techniques, wasting everyone's time. I had to ignore the two who were working with silver to focus on the two who were still practicing with steel.

Then the tourists came. HSP has eco-tourism trips that bring groups of 10-30 americans from schools or churches to build stoves or teach art lessons, or whatever they've planned, the same thing Hugh and I did when we met here a year and a half ago. Well, some of the groups were working in a village near Xeavaj, and some donations from the people on the trip were going to build a patio for their school, and they're a community of weavers, so AMA brought them through Xeavaj for a demonstration of different village practices like weaving or making atole de maiz, and to buy their weavings, and also to buy my students earrings. AMA did this twice, the first time with a church group of 10, and I came with them and we had a class so the tourists could see us making earrings and hear us talk about the experience, to try to get them to buy more, basically. That was the day before I got so sick. Marta spent the entire time on her phone with her boyfriend, so didn't even finish most of the earrings she started. And the tourists hardly bought anything, so it was just kind of a long stay in the cold for not much. The next week there was a group of thirty, and we had our class in a small office room of the school that was still very cold and dark. This time It was just me and Marta and Pascuala, the other women didn't want to participate for some reason. This group was very excited about the activities and the women's work, and ended up going home with a lot of the products, and a lot of the earrings. So as my other flaky students are standing there watching people buy their earrings, they quickly come to the classroom and want to make more. As soon as they see money change hands its a race to the materials. And this was stressful for me, because Lupe was bringing groups through the room to talk to me and to us, and Juana is getting angrier and angrier waiting for me to cut a piece of chain for her that she should already know how to do. That was what changed this day. They started getting angry at me and at Lupe because she was in charge. The thing was that the other weavings the women brought from their house, and we sold them there to the tourists with basically all the money going straight back into their hands. AMA didn't provide the materials or teach them how to do it, they don't have any title to the money. The earrings were AMA's, not the women's, so when someone handed over money for the earrings, the money didn't go into a woman's hand. It went to materials and gas and my plane ticket, and then we were going to pay them the next week per hour for what they did. The other thing is that most of the earrings for sale there were not made by the women in Xeavaj. As I said, they were usually flaky so they really didn't make all that many compared to my other classes, and so the women there didn't really have a claim to money changing hands anyway, and that was something that should have been either obvious or easily explained (which Hilda did, I watched her.) And so class is continuing, more and more people are cycling through, and the women are cycling through and acting very strangely. Speaking spitting Quiche so I couldn't understand them, and Marta, more and more and infuriatingly more, is complaining about making the earrings. I finally ask her why everyone is so upset and she explodes into this tirade about how we're not paying them for their earrings. I admit it had been too much time between when they made their first pair and when we paid them for it, but when they've only made 3 or 4 pairs, there's just not that much money to give, I was hoping to wait until there was a bigger sum to make it look more worth while. And Juana Carrillo was pissed. I mean pissed, and bringing Francisca and Maria in on it, and of course whenever there's money involved Marta is in on it, stoking the fire. So they're mad at me. I'm sorry, I say, there's nothing I can do about it, I don't have the money. So they tell me "go talk to Lupe! do it now! we want our money!" so Lupe of course is busy translating for the groups, I grab Hilda and tell her how mad they are and she goes in to talk to them and explain the project AGAIN and what they need to expect AGAIN. Then another tourist group comes in and the women are spitting and hissing while I'm trying, cheerfully, to explain what the project's about, how we hope to help, how much fun it's been... And in between Marta is catching my attention and saying "see how dark it is in here! Feel how cold! How much we suffer, Caitie, how much we suffer! and you haven't paid us! See this earring? How much value! How much value it has to me! I should be paid for this!" What can I do? We are paying you, Marta, just not this second. I have to organize your earrings and count how many you've made and count your hours, just like normal workers. I have explained this to you at least twice, when the project started and later during conversation, and then Hilda's explained it at least twice. It was just impatience and manipulation. It made me sad. I have felt for a long time that Marta was trying to manipulate me past the point of me continuing to regard her as a friend. Now I don't want to go back. They'll be angry at me, make me feel guilty, try to get me to make up for it. And I don't think I deserve it.

I talked to Lupe about this for a long time aftwerwards. What was interesting was that she was surprised at who my students were. I took out a picture I had of the AMA group, and she pointed to a few women who she said she started this project specifically for, who haven't been in my class since the first day. She also told me that Marta is not part of the community (she lives with her boyfriend's mom) and is also not a member of AMA. Also, past that, Marta has an education, and could be a teacher if she wanted to, but that's the thing. She doesn't want to work. Same with Juana carrillo and her sister, Marta's mother-in-law. They apparently received money from someone in the US to go to school to be teachers, and when they graduated they quit getting money, but they also didn't get jobs. Lupe told me that they called her at her house a year ago asking for money. Then they asked her to take them to the US. Which isn't what AMA does! They then asked her to print the pictures she had of themselves to send to the people who sent them through school to send to them to ask for money, asked Lupe to write the letter and everything. She told me it was ridiculous. That these women in particular learned the system for manipulation, and now that's the only form they function in. She said it's sad. It's what happens when rich people come in and give shit away, it creates dependency. I don't know. It kills me. So I feel like my whole class has been a waste there. They aren't interested in learning skills, or having a new trade, or coming together as a group. They're not interested in making well made earrings, by the looks of their finished products and the amount of care they give their materials. They're just interested in what happened that fair day. Money coming into their hands. I can't keep giving materials to people whose earring's I'm going to have to spend as much time fixing as selling. I don't know what's going to happen there anyway though. A lot of the weavings they brought to sell were dirty. As if they picked it up off the kitchen table to hang up to sell. I guess they just don't get it.

There's another community very close to Xeavaj where the tourists built stoves. The women there weave too, and really wanted to participate in AMA and weave for us. So Hilda told them she'd give them yarn for this specific project, and then I guess couldn't make it up there. So the women WALKED to her house to find her to get the yarn. This community is almost 2 hours by car, and was a four hour walk. Then when they got to Cantel to find Hilda, they didn't have phones to call her, didn't know her last name, just wandered through the town asking people on the street if they knew where "Hilda, the woman who works with the gringos" lives. They finally found her house and HIlda. But my God, they were so intense about weaving and excited about working with AMA that they walked 4 hours to Xela to get their yarn. There's the difference. When AMA had their weaving in Xeavaj, they kept sending out dirty scarves and demanding more money. So Lupe said fine, I'll give you more money, but you have to improve the quality and wash them before you give them to me. Sound business advice to me. So they said that AMA had to buy them soap then, and Lupe had to tell them, I can do that for you too, but it will take away the extra money you want.

Ok, well, that's enough for now. I'm just so disappointed with this class I can't stand myself. For a long time I felt like I had failed them as a teacher, that's why they weren't interested enough to come to every class, that's why they didn't care enough to have good craftsmanship when I know full well that they are capable of it. But I think it's just the nature of the beast. And not the whole community is like this, I just managed to get the worst ones when Marta volunteered her house for the classes.