The huipil: how a Guatemalan village speaks through thread

A huipil is a loose tunic, usually made from two or three rectangular panels. Sometimes there is one, sometimes five. The panels are woven to the right size rather than cut from a larger piece, then joined with stitching, ribbons or strips of fabric so that the edges just meet. Cotton is the most common fibre, though huipils in wool or silk exist too.

The huipil does not follow the shape of the body. The neckline can be round, square or a simple slit, and the sides are often sewn closed with openings for the arms. Together with the corte, a woven wraparound skirt, and the faja, a sash at the waist, it forms the traje, the full traditional dress.

Traditional huipil cloth comes from a backstrap loom. The principle is simple. Two bars hold the warp threads. One is tied to a fixed point, the other to the weaver, by a strap that runs around her back. Leaning back puts the threads under tension. Leaning forward releases them, so she can lift threads and pass the weft through.

The loom is half tool, half body. That has a consequence: the width of the cloth is limited to how far the weaver can reach from side to side. Wider garments are therefore made from narrow panels joined together. The loom does allow many techniques, including pick-up patterns with extra threads and brocading, where coloured threads are carried into the weave to form a motif.

The Maxwell Museum of Anthropology reckons the Maya have been weaving on this loom for at least two thousand years. The Spanish brought the treadle loom, worked mostly by men, although that is changing; the backstrap loom stayed in use alongside it. In Maya cosmology the moon goddess Ix Chel guards weaving, childbirth and medicine, and the same museum reads the brocaded diamonds and zigzags as the weaver's relationship with the natural and the spiritual world.

Traditional huipils show which people and which community the wearer belongs to. Each community has its own designs for weaving and embroidery, and among Maya women the motifs on the front, back and shoulders indicate which village someone is from. For a long time it was uncommon, and often considered shameful, to wear a huipil with another community's design in your own village.

Besides the everyday huipil, women often own one for special occasions such as a wedding. In some Mesoamerican communities the wedding huipil is kept to be buried in. Ceremonial huipils belong to the cofradías, the brotherhoods that care for a saint. The wives of the officers wear one over their everyday huipil, and the Museo Ixchel in Guatemala City describes such dress as clothing that tells you a person's standing and office in the community.

A living tradition doesn't stand still. Weavers increasingly use commercially produced yarn, which widens the range of colours while the designs remain. At the same time, women's cooperatives in villages such as San Juan La Laguna, on Lake Atitlán, have revived dyeing with plants, bark and minerals.

If a motif says where you come from, a question follows: who may use it? In May 2016 weavers, together with the women's association AFEDES from Sacatepéquez, went to Guatemala's Constitutional Court with a complaint against the state: there were no rules protecting their weaving. By February 2017 a bill was before Congress that would amend five articles spread across copyright law, industrial property law, the law on crafts and the penal code. They wanted recognition of the collective intellectual property of Indigenous peoples over their textiles and dress. Around thirty weaving associations from eighteen language communities stand behind the movement.

Their objection was to companies mass-producing their designs while the communities gained nothing. A spokeswoman for AFEDES pointed out that some elements of their clothing are sacred, and that others are worn only in ceremonies or by spiritual leaders. To them, a design is not decoration to be copied freely.

They also pointed to an imbalance. The state benefits from their work, they said, while the women who make the textiles still face discrimination. Anyone who buys a piece of weaving steps into that relationship, whether they intend to or not.

That background makes looking richer, and buying too. A few things we pass on to travellers. Ask before you photograph someone, even at a busy market. A huipil is a person's clothing, not a backdrop.

If you want to buy a huipil or a piece of weaving, it is best to buy directly from the weaver or from a cooperative. There you can ask who made it, which village the design comes from and how it was dyed. The answers give the piece more value than any label. A worn huipil has had a life with someone. Ask about it, and leave alone anything that looks ceremonial.

And take your time. A morning with a weaver who shows you how she sets up the warp tells you more about Guatemala than a bag full of souvenirs. In Santiago Atitlán, the Cojolya Weaving Center and Museum shows the history and process of backstrap weaving, and how Tz'utujil dress has changed over time.