Zunil & Cantel, Guatemala: A Tale of Two Co-ops, or How to Buy/Sell With Dignity
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During our time in Xela, we often visited surrounding towns, on trips organized by our language school. One such visit was to the town of Zunil, to see an indigenous women’s weaving cooperative and some religious buildings. The religious buildings were underwhelming (another story in itself), but Renate and I were more interested in learning about the co-op anyway.
When we arrived at the co-op, our guide introduced us to a worker representative and then left. For the next five minutes, the woman explained that the co-op was not making enough money, and so it relied on people like us to buy its products. We asked a few questions about how the co-op worked, but only got short responses. The worker invited us to peruse the products for sale in the two tiny front rooms, for the 20 minutes remaining until our guide would return. The products were all quite expensive (even by US standards), costing several times as much as similar products in other markets. Most of us were done (not) shopping after a few minutes.
A couple weeks later, another school trip took me to a nearby glass cooperative. This time, we started with a thorough tour of the coop’s facilities and a description of the glass making process. One of the workers demonstrated the liquid properties of molten glass and enthusiastically answered our questions about the co-op’s work. After our tour, we all walked through the coop’s small storefront to see their products, and when we were ready, we left.
Reflection
Renate and I left the weaving cooperative feeling fairly bitter, if not peeved. We recognized that the co-op needed money and that we could better afford to purchase their goods than locals. At the same time, we felt that our guide and the co-op representative had only related to us as walking moneybags whose sole purpose is to buy local handicrafts. While admittedly we enjoy buying the occasional handicraft, we also were hoping to learn about how the co-op was managed, how the products were made, and the services and activities that co-op members participated in. In fact, it is often precisely this learning that makes the products meaningful for us (i.e. makes us want to buy them).
Our language teachers had repeatedly told us that we should treat the indigenous women with human dignity, rather then reducing them to or objectifying them as colorful walking photo-ops. Agreed. Likewise, we also hope to be treated with human dignity, rather than be reduced to or objectified as wealthy foreign consumers. I felt that both sides treated each other with dignity at the glass co-op, and what would’ve been just a monetary transaction became a social interaction. And best of all, you’ll all now receive ornately decorated glass vases in the mail for the holidays! Or at least packages of jagged glass shards… cooperatively made, of course.
Question
What does buying/selling with dignity mean to you? How do you relate with handicraft sellers?
During our time in Xela, we often visited surrounding towns, on trips organized by our language school. One such visit was to the town of Zunil, to see an indigenous women’s weaving cooperative and some religious buildings. The religious buildings were underwhelming (another story in itself), but Renate and I were more interested in learning about the co-op anyway.
When we arrived at the co-op, our guide introduced us to a worker representative and then left. For the next five minutes, the woman explained that the co-op was not making enough money, and so it relied on people like us to buy its products. We asked a few questions about how the co-op worked, but only got short responses. The worker invited us to peruse the products for sale in the two tiny front rooms, for the 20 minutes remaining until our guide would return. The products were all quite expensive (even by US standards), costing several times as much as similar products in other markets. Most of us were done (not) shopping after a few minutes.
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| Zunil | Mayan fabrics drying on a balcony |
A couple weeks later, another school trip took me to a nearby glass cooperative. This time, we started with a thorough tour of the coop’s facilities and a description of the glass making process. One of the workers demonstrated the liquid properties of molten glass and enthusiastically answered our questions about the co-op’s work. After our tour, we all walked through the coop’s small storefront to see their products, and when we were ready, we left.
 |  |
| Unloading glass | A glass worker dripping glass |
Reflection
Renate and I left the weaving cooperative feeling fairly bitter, if not peeved. We recognized that the co-op needed money and that we could better afford to purchase their goods than locals. At the same time, we felt that our guide and the co-op representative had only related to us as walking moneybags whose sole purpose is to buy local handicrafts. While admittedly we enjoy buying the occasional handicraft, we also were hoping to learn about how the co-op was managed, how the products were made, and the services and activities that co-op members participated in. In fact, it is often precisely this learning that makes the products meaningful for us (i.e. makes us want to buy them).
Our language teachers had repeatedly told us that we should treat the indigenous women with human dignity, rather then reducing them to or objectifying them as colorful walking photo-ops. Agreed. Likewise, we also hope to be treated with human dignity, rather than be reduced to or objectified as wealthy foreign consumers. I felt that both sides treated each other with dignity at the glass co-op, and what would’ve been just a monetary transaction became a social interaction. And best of all, you’ll all now receive ornately decorated glass vases in the mail for the holidays! Or at least packages of jagged glass shards… cooperatively made, of course.
Question
What does buying/selling with dignity mean to you? How do you relate with handicraft sellers?
4 Comments:
At 5:30 PM, Jen said…
Just reading this I felt that uncomfortable feeling of someone making you feel like you have to buy something. I hate that.
Today Alex and I were wandering around near the artists' studios in City Market, and we met a man who does watercolors. I always feel a little uncomfortable when approaching artist studioes, like there is an expectation for me to buy something. And sure, that's a reason they are there. But we had such a great conversation with the man, talking about where he has traveled (and has watercolors from those locations) and it felt great. I didn't have any cash on me, but I felt much more inclined to buy some of his watercolors because he took the time to talk to us about just random things AND his art.
And we felt comfortable telling him that we would have to come by again sometime, because we didn't have any cash on us (he didn't take credit cards). And you know what? We meant it. He was great. And I loved his paintings of Sienna, Italy.
That event today is an example of the buying/selling with dignity. He does what he loves to do - watercolor paintings. And us buying or not buying his product doesn't change how he feels about his craft, and it doesn't affect his relationship with us. He loves to talk about travel and painting; we talked about travel and painting; we both feel positive at the end.
Sure - selling is a plus for him. But I didn't leave with that creepy 'you didn't buy anything from me' feeling.
It reinforced some things I've been trying to figure out for myself - in whatever I decide to do for a living when I move: taking pride in my work, doing something I enjoy, and valuing my work. If you value your work, and you don't compromise on that, you feel confident about your prices and your work, and if someone chooses not to buy something you make, you don't take it as a personal attack.
It seems that first co-op set you up for "you must support us" and then when you don't, they held a grudge/had an attitude that then carries over to other potential customers.
At 10:51 AM, lernerm said…
Buying with dignity? or do you mean buying with a good conscience? Certainly I feel good when I buy from a local artist or merchant rather than at Walmart. However, if I buy a picture from an artist and later in the day at another stall I find a nicer picture from another artist, I feel bad that I bought the wrong picture, but good that at least I bought a nice one and helped a local artist. Now, if I were to find out that the artist I bought it from was in greater need than the artist that I didn't buy from, would that make a difference? Probably not, since I'm buying mainly to satisfy my needs - for art, and secondarily, to buy from someone local who benefits from my money. If I mainly wanted to help a local cause, I'd simply donate money instead of buying a work of art. So a good question is, if the art work is high quality and low price, would you still feel bad about buying it, even though they sort of suckered you into buying it? Selling with dignity? Depends on how poor you are. Really poor artists/merchants need to sell to stay alive, so dignity is a luxury to them. For all others, it's nice to sell without compromising one's morals. Closer to home, don't forget about transactions that aren't as obvious as the onces you had. I "sell" my medical knowledge - when one goes to the doctor, you trust himi to sell you what you really need, and yet, he is a businessman in a sense as well as a doctor, so are you being taken advantage of when he prescribes a medication like Celebrex that really isn't much better than ibuprofen (noting that Celebrex gives him samples, free lunches, etc), or when he recommends that a mole be removed because it might be cancerous (and he might get a nice check for removing it.) I think the real issue is the one you allude to - ie being treated like a complete human and not just a source of money
At 12:54 AM, Anonymous said…
Maybe you forget that most of the world is desperately poor?? Sometimes, just like lernerm said, this translates to, "money please" from our point of view, instead of, oh, let's learn about you and you can learn about us and we can all benefit from this relationship. I don't think many people have the luxury to think like that and I'm surprised you think they do. To them, we are impossibly rich Americans, regardless of whether we feel that way. Sometimes when you're that poor (or sick or whatever), you could care less about helping someone else understand your situation, you just want help fixing it.
Obviously, they just weren't good enough at sales for you. They should hire a front person to meet the tourists and sell, sell, sell. (cynical, I know) But, I agree with you, I hate situations where I feel they're after me only for my money, but hey, in this situation, at least they were honest (sort-of).
At 9:06 PM, josh said…
Actually, our experiences would seem to suggest the opposite. The weaving co-op had a front-person to make a sales pitch, and it alienated its customers and was in bad financial shape. The glass co-op didn’t focus on the sales pitch, and it endeared itself to visitors and was doing good business. Granted, these are only two examples, but maybe the monetary-transaction-centric approach isn’t necessarily even good business for the locals?
Damn straight, a lot of people are poor here. Like many Latin American activists we’ve met, I try to look at this poverty using a conjunctural approach – examining all the factors that contribute to a certain problem in order to decide what to do about it. In this case, it seems to me that one large factor contributing to poverty is the ability of corporations and business elite to communicate and consolidate power across borders, while the majority of the population is kept isolated and divided. In this sense, perhaps encouraging more social interaction between the people of the Americas can be a step towards reducing this poverty (aka globalization from below).
Moreover, as Jen mentioned, do we want to live in a world where our life’s work is reduced to financial transactions? Traveling through Latin America, where it’s standard practice to chat extensively with friends, family, and passer-byers while working, it seems like many people here also prefer to view work as something more than a way to make money.
josh
p.s. in the instance of the weaving co-op, we were expecting to learn more about the co-op only because that’s how our language school had presented the visit, as part of the school’s educational activities.
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