The Mayan Train has put the municipality of Felipe Carrillo Puerto on the path of accelerated development that, until now, has only brought them insecurity. Determined to defend their culture, at the Mayan School at the U Kúuchil K Ch’i’ibalo’on Community Center, children weave their own stories as a way to protect their identity and their territory.
THE MAYAN COMMUNITY THAT EMBROIDERS RESISTANCE courtesy of the U Kúuchil K Ch’i’ibalo’on Community Center 1
Determined to defend their culture, at the Mayan School at the U Kúuchil K Ch’i’ibalo’on Community Center, children weave their own stories as a way to protect their identity and their territory. / Photo: Courtesy/U Kúuchil K Ch’i’ibalo’on Community Center.
Esther Sulub Santos, a Mayan woman, has such an intimate relationship with embroidery that she completely identifies with it. “I was born and raised in embroidery,” she says. “I grew up watching my grandmother, my mother, my aunts embroider by hand, by machine, or with cross stitch.”
Although she’s retired, she’s always active, says her brother Ángel. Esther paints and writes stories and coordinates the embroidery workshop at the Escuelita Maya, a project promoted since 2020 by the U Kúuchil K Ch’i’ibalo’on community center. It’s an autonomous, collectively managed space located high on a hill under a large palapa, immersed in the jungle of Felipe Carrillo Puerto, in southern Quintana Roo.
“This place is full of life, of the spirits of the wind, of the forest, of the spirits of our grandfathers and grandmothers who run around to protect it,” says Wilma Esquivel Pat, a high school teacher who is part of the Escuelita Maya.
Every afternoon, a group of girls and boys gather under the palapa with their mothers and grandmothers to embroider everything essential to the Mayan people: toucans, jaguars, cenotes, corn, and milpas. “Embroidering is a way of remembering our ancestors, of defending our territory, of fighting against dispossession,” says Esther, who often wears elegant huipiles. In this collective space, embroidering animals is an exercise in memory and a struggle against the attempts to erase Mayan culture brought about by mega-tourism projects.
It all began in the 1970s, when Cancún promoted a model of mass tourism that gradually spread to southern Quintana Roo. First to Playa del Carmen, then to Tulum, and in recent years has moved to Felipe Carrillo Puerto, in the center of the state. A large number of people living in the more than 150 rural communities surrounding this town of 30,000 people work in large hotels and restaurants in the tourist area, where the Mayan identity is trivialized and commercialized for the enjoyment of visitors who want to see traditional dances and participate in rituals or temazcales.
The Escuelita Maya is a space we created to re-establish the bond that the educational system destroys and to reach out to the elderly, which is like reaching out to the earth, to memory, to the web of life.
Ángel Sulub Santos, Mayan resident, declared:
“Many things are changing, and little by little, we seem to be letting go and forgetting who we are,” Wilma laments. “That’s happening very quickly here.”
Those who belong to U Kúuchil K Ch’i’ibalo’on (The Place of Our Ancestors) believe that, in Quintana Roo, traditional schools seek to erase the memory and way of life of the Mayan people, training youth “to serve tourists.” This is a “cruel strategy” that nullifies their knowledge and forces them to leave their villages to work on the tourism development projects that are multiplying in the Mexican Caribbean: large luxury hotels, theme parks like Xcaret, and the Maya Train megaproject.
“The Little Mayan School is a space we created to re-establish that bond that the educational system destroys, and to bring us closer to the elderly, which is like getting closer to the land, to memory, to the web of life,” explains Ángel.
The Violent Transition to Development
Where there is economic development, criminal groups also arrive in search of profit, warns Ángel; In Felipe Carrillo Puerto, the number of disappearances and murders of young people has increased in recent years. That’s why U Kúuchil K Ch’i’ibalo’on rejects the unstoppable mass tourism that is devouring indigenous territories.
Source: OEM
