Union y Fuerza de Mujeres
Moloji’l kiochi’qa ixoqi

Union y Fuerza de Mujeres has existed since 1998 in the small village of Panimatzalam, in the mountains just above the Atitlan lake in Guatemala.
The group was started by 8 women and now it has 30 members. Their aim for starting this group was to help their unemployed husbands with the bills and to gather household money. Most of the womens husbands are unemployed farmers.
The goal of this group is to increase participation by women in social and cultural activities, education, production, enviroment, health och an increased quality of life.
One of the first things the women did after starting the cooperative, was to organize education with different weaving techniques for their members.

Needs in the cooperative

When the women started to look through the different needs that their members had, they saw that the biggest problem was time. The women needed to have time to weave and do their handicraft! A cornmill was bought with the proceeds from selling their handicraft and is now being used of all women in the village. Now the women can help each other grinding the corn to cornflower for the families tortillas, instead of every woman taking time to grind  their own corn, something that takes a lot of time every day, and so liberating time to do handicraft.

After this the women decided to build a common locality where the women can weave together and also have training courses. This house is now built and is being used every day by the women.
The group has also started to construct a house with a baking oven, where the women take turns of baking bread twice a week, that is then sold in the area, and this also brings the group some money for the survival of the group.

Tapetes

The women weave and embroider tapetes and table cloth by hand, using their back strap looms. The Tapetes are being made as “windows” into the mayan way of every day life. They show the different activitys that happens in the village and the traditions and customs of the mayas.
Before starting to weave the woman needs to figure out what kind of motive she wants to use for her tapete, and then she sits down to weave the background. This is being done on a back strap loom. Then it takes in between 2-3 weeks to do the pattern and embroider it on the background. The women have not been able to localise a market for their tapetes and by doing so, have a secure source to maintain the women and their familys.

The group has not recieved any international help, all the things they have accomplished have they done by themselves. Union y Fuerza de Mujeres has a council that has elections amongst it’s members every second year.
The cooperative has a fund where 10 % of every product sold is being used to fund the different projects that the group mutually decide upon, and the remaining 90 % goes directly to the producer of the product.

Fair Monkey sells the wonderful tapetes that the women do, and also have lectures about the womens artwork.