Posted 10 years ago
ho2cultcha
(5051 items)
i bought this and another just like it at a little antique store in Panajachel in 1984. It's the most beautiful and intricate weaving? ikat? i've seen from Guatemala. I ruined one of them w/ candle wax many years ago, but i'm glad i kept this one. i'd love to know how old it is and what it would have been used for, and which ethnicity made it. it measures 23.5 inches x 20 inches [not including the tassles]. if you look closely at the pics, you can see there are humanoid figures in it. i don't know a whole lot about Guatemalan textiles, so if you do, please tell me about this piece.
I was living in Guatemala in '84, but didn't study the fine points of area cultural design. Wish I had now, but things were a bit "hairy" at the time! That wasn't a good time to be in that area unarmed! Yeah, I was there! Just don't ask which side! LOL!! Lot you don't know about me Mani! I got a kick out of your mentioning the year! Fun times & great climate in the highlands! LOL!!!!!
that was a very hairy time in the highlands! what WERE you doing there? i had a life-changing experience near Todos Santos Cuchumatanes in Huehue. my friend KC Childs and i were on a bus which was stopped by the military and we were all told to get out - we 4 tourists were directed to the side w/ the women and the men were on the other side. a bunch of the indian men were taken away and didn't get back on the bus. many of the women sat silently w/ tears running down their faces. that's when kc and i began to ask questions and investigate what was happening. that lead to my future studies and career for the next 15 yrs working w/ indigenous peoples from all over the americas.
i found out last night from a good friend that this is an old servilleta from Concepcion Huista, Huehue. there aren't any examples of the old cloth like this online, but some similarity to modern pieces.
Wasn't much less hairy lower down. Arrived in Guat. Ciudad the day the military overthrew the gov't. & fighting with the guerrillas was going full bore. Street fighting & every morning I would look at the corners to see which side held my neighbourhood & hope I didn't see a military uniform on 1 corner & a guerrilla uniform on the next corner. Gotten used to being in the middle of these situations over the yrs. & this isn't the place to ramble on about them.
i befriended an american who was married to a Guatemalan Indian on this trip. His name was Micheal Devine and he was killed / beheaded by a guatemalan general who was [and continued to be] on the CIA payroll. i just found that out recently.
Had my experiences with the CIA & I can assure that they are the lowest form of life. They do not wear the white hats as many seem to believe. They launched a serious attack on me yrs ago that cost U.S. tax payers $millions but this is not the place to air their terrorist tactics. Yes, I'm still very bitter!
we could both probably share some eye-opening stories! now we have a whole slew of new agencies which do similar crap with no accountability [homeland insecurity].
Hi, I was there many times in the 80's. Panajachel I remember patrols starting before dark with Indians with stick type clubs. My friend Yuki opened a Japanese restaurant in Antigua, and he was murdered a few years later. I was in a ping pong tournament at Panajachel and lost in quarter finals with Eng. partner, Yuki and another Japanese won! Dangerous times then. Later I spent time in Rivas Prison Nicaragua.
Actually, I felt very safe in Guat. Ciudad as you know your aren't going to get robbed with soldiers (in diff. uniforms) on every corner. Of course with blonde hair, you obviously aren't a combatant. Now traveling E & W of the city, had some real "pucker-factor moments! Many spread-eagle moments & they were serious! I would walk a safe distance away when they started the car with the CD tag on it we used some. Laughed at when they realized why I was doing that but the embassy got bombed soon after. I was born at nite, but it wasn't last nite!
Makes me sad to watch the people of the country of my birth give away all their freedoms for "security". The founding fathers warned of just such a contingency.
Yeah Tora, they drew-down seriously on me at the El Salvador frontier. Don't guess they like blondes! Back stroke time!! Have to admit that the only time I was shot at with "intent" was by Mexican soldiers while approaching Belize.
I always fire a warning shot. It's the last shot!
i remember when guat city was a safe city - we could walk anywhere at any hour w/ no problem. now, NOBODY is safe in most of the city after dark. even during the day, it's bad. the last time i was there, my luggage disappeared while it was being unloaded at the city's only 5 star hotel at the time. gone in the blink of an eye. i was thrown in a jail in honduras for sharing 'revolutionary literature' [i had a book on the autonomy process in nicaragua]. the jail was just a square patch of mud w/ very high barbed wire fence all around us. the colonel who ordered my arrest got in BIG trouble for arresting a UN employee. we drank some shots over it a year or so later...
So this textile is actually a 'reboso' which was used rolled in a circle and worn on the head in order to comfortably balance large loads on their heads. It was made by the people of Concepcion Huista, Guatemala. It is the old method of dying fabric and nobody does it anymore. this is a fantastically complex and difficult dye / weave job. it must have taken someone 6 - 9 months to make!