From Our World To Theirs

Artistry of the Loom: Traje

For over two thousand years, Maya cloth and clothing have served as artistic expressions communicating layers of meaning. The communication is visual; you need to "read" their traditional clothing or traje.You can identify the community to which a Maya belongs by how they dress. Traje is usually hand-woven on a backstrap loom or embroidered in rainbow colors with geometric, floral, animal, or human designs.

A Maya woman wearing traje and using a backstrap loom in Guatemala in 1999.

A woman's dress ensemble includes a multicolored upper garment called a huipile; a solid colored or patterned skirt called a falda or corte; an embroidered or woven belt or faja; adornment for the head or hair called cinta or liston; and a variety of multipurpose cloths called tzute, toalle, servilleta, or cargador.

In Guatemala, when a woman wears her huipile a, she walks around with her woven designs revealing her world. The designs and colors announce her village, her social standing within the village, and her skill as a weaver. The colors and designs also may reveal her work and her spiritual beliefs. For example, the image of a certain kind of bat indicates a link to the moon goddess; a woman wearing a huipil with these designs might be a midwife. Although a woman's huipil has certain shared elements with others in her village, her own designs make the weaving very personal to her.

Men may wear shirts or camisas and trousers or pantalones of tie-dyed or ikat cloth known as jaspe, short woolen kilts or rodilleras, black woolen overgarments called gabones, shoulder bags or morales, and sombreros. In some communities men wear headcloths or tzutes, and some wear their hats on top of these cloths.