To indigenous creators, all the support

In a meeting with 500 women artisans from practically all the native peoples of MexicoPresident Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo yesterday proposed increasing the holding of Original: Mexican Textile Art Meeting in the country’s capital from one to four times a year, in addition to extending it to other parts of the Republic.

After being applauded for this approach, the president also announced the intention to strengthen the National Fund for the Promotion of Crafts (Fonart), so that be a true institution for the marketing of crafts, particularly textiles.

Addressing the artisans, he maintained that such measures are part of a series of actions aimed at ensuring that the second constitutional article, which establishes the recognition of the full rights of indigenous peoples, is not just a letter in the Magna Carta, but becomes in a reality.

We are working with the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI) and the entire government to be able to build the justice plans that we still lack. And creative women, indigenous women, have to be in these. We want them to be part of these justice plans from their construction and to make what is today in the letter of the Constitution a reality.he remarked.

The meeting between Sheinbaum and the indigenous creators took place in the afternoon in the central courtyard of the National Palace, the eve of the inauguration of the fourth edition of Original, which will take place between today and next Sunday at the Los Pinos Cultural Complex.

Also present were the head of the capital’s Government, Clara Brugada, who expressed her interest in having a permanent place in Mexico City for this meeting; the heads of the federal Secretariats of Culture (SC) and Welfare, Claudia Curiel de Icaza and Ariadna Montiel, respectively, as well as Ernestina Godoy, legal advisor to the Presidency, among other officials.

This was the first time that the Original participants attended the presidential residence, a fact that was highlighted by the president: For the first time they are here in the National Palace, because when I came to the government I said that I did not arrive alone, but that we all arrived..

The head of the Executive highlighted that at the foundations of that central site is the memory of the country, although not that of 500 or a thousand years ago, but rather a living memory that is maintained and expressed in the native peoples. You are the pride, the wealth, the greatness of Mexicohe stressed, and then emphasized that these attributes were not recognized by previous governments, only from the one headed by Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

President Claudia Sheinbaum yesterday, during the meeting with artisans at the National Palace. Photo by Yazmín Ortega

Contributions

He mentioned the contributions made by the historian Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, wife of the former president, and Alejandra Frausto Guerrero, previous head of the SC.

Because since then very important work began to be done so that the designs of the embroiderers, the creators, the pieces, the most wonderful textiles that no country in the world has and that are only created were not plagiarized. for Mexican womenhe added.

From there it became Original, to be able to show and prevent commercial brands from plagiarizing the designs of indigenous women, from the history of Mexico, from their living memory.

With the empowerment of Original and the strengthening of Fonart as a true marketer, Sheinbaum Pardo stated, Not only do we bring to life throughout the country the cultural richness and greatness of Mexico, which is expressed in each of the fabrics, the threads, the beauty that you make with your beautiful hands, but we also recover historical memory. It is not only social justice, but justice is also recovered for the native peoples and our homeland is magnified..

Curiel de Icaza highlighted that indigenous women artisans are, without a doubt, the deepest and most living link to what we have as the cultural greatness of our country.

Precisely they, who have been historically invisible and whose hands have uninterruptedly woven and embroidered the history of our country from generation to generation, today raise their voices with the strength and dignity of those who have transformed the course of our country through their resistance.

Regarding what the Mexican textile meeting has achieved in four years, including this edition, he assured that it has gained “a central relevance in the transformation of fair practices around production and the relationship between creators and consumption. If they don’t haggle with a brand, why do they do it with the artisans?

Original has fundamentally become a movement that arises as an act of resistance against exploitation, plagiarism and the dispossession of the culture of our creative communities. It is the defense of collective intellectual property, the appreciation of the unique and unrepeatable, the vindication of our living heritage, an act of listening, of exchange of knowledge without hierarchies, without subordinations: an exchange of one to one.

The fourth edition of the meeting will consist of presentations, parades, conferences, exchanges and special work with girls and boys. More than a thousand artisans from the 32 states of the Republic, 231 municipalities and 320 localities will participate.