Traditional Guatemalan Clothing Demonstration in Antigua
I’m currently studying Spanish at a Spanish school in Antigua, Guatemala. Nearly every day the school offers some sort of free local activity. There was a walking tour, a bicycle tour, and a visit to a nut farm. Yesterday’s activity was a Traditional Guatemalan clothing demonstration where, well, we went to see and learn about typical clothes worn by Guatemalans.
The traditional Guatemala clothing demonstration was all in Spanish, of course, and let’s just say my Spanish is far from perfect at this point so, really, most of the time I had no idea what was going on. No. Idea.
But the clothing was beautiful all the same: colorful garments of red, blue, pink, and green threads in intricately woven patterns that preserve a long tradition of Mayan culture.
As a demonstration, some of the women in my class were dressed up in traditional Central American clothing like woven skirts (cortes) and blouses (huipil or güipil). Some of the men were dressed in wool wrap ponchitos (rodillera) and straw hats. We were given a demonstration on the utility cloths (tzute) and how they are used for many purposes, including wrapping around the woman to serve as a carrier for her baby. We watched a pretend wedding ceremony where the tzute was passed between generations. We were given a demonstration on how these textiles were woven by hand on a small wooden device.
After the traditional Guatemalan clothes demonstration we sat down for more demonstrations, this time on tortilla making and coffee making.
And then, of course, we were invited to shop the shop and buy whatever traditional clothing and accessories we wanted. Multi-functional woven baby carrier anyone? Perhaps another day.
Photos from the Traditional Guatemalan Clothing Demonstration:
