Olga Silvia Teran Contreras

Olga Silvia Teran Contreras has developed an integrated method for helping Mayan women in the Yucatan transform embroidery from a handicraft into a professional trade that offers them excellent employment while enhancing their view of themselves and their culture.

Olga Silvia aims to do more than simply make traditional embroidery production professional, competitive, and profitable. She seeks to create an environment in which indigenous women feel more confident and have greater respect for themselves and for their cultural traditions through her organization Tun Ben Kin and its affiliated Maya Chuy (Mayan embroidery) project. She believes that only in this way will her project achieve its fundamental goals: greater autonomy for the embroiderers, gender equity, revitalization of the Mayan culture, and decreased emigration to large urban areas. Many activists have tried to improve the economic status of Mexican artisans by organizing them into collectives. Some have tried to use technology to transform a craft into an industry; others have tried to improve the artisans' skills and the recovery of their cultural traditions; and still others have pursued improved distribution and marketing. What sets Olga Silvia's work apart is her integration of all three approaches, combined with a deep concern for the pride and dignity of the artisans. She has developed a comprehensive training program to teach craftswomen the skills needed to make their work more efficient and profitable, while maintaining traditional Mayan designs and culture.

The Yucatan is among the poorest Mexican states, and many of its inhabitants are facing difficult economic times. Textiles made from the fibers of the henequen plant, the biggest industry of the region, is threatened by the growing use of synthetic fibers. As communities are losing their economic base, many residents leave in search of new jobs. Emigration has contributed to the erosion of the region's Mayan culture.

The Mayan women of the Yucatan have the potential for creating a new form of family income through their traditional embroidery. Several factors, however, have prevented them from reaping the full benefits of their work: popular disdain for indigenous products, uneven quality, saturation of local markets, and an inability to reach more distant markets. Additionally, because the women regard embroidery as a casual activity, something they do for personal use and not for sale, they seldom know their costs of production or the market value of the finished product, and often sell their products to dealers for a pittance.

Olga's response has been to professionalize the craft of embroidery. She helps the women divide their labor efficiently, learn how to use a computer to design new products, find new markets, and calculate a fair price. But her concern goes beyond production and marketing; she addresses cultural and gender issues as well. She has identified and worked with all of the key players in the industry: designers, merchants, transporters who offer to sell the embroidery at no profit to themselves, and consumers interested in indigenous products.

The centerpiece of Olga Silvia's strategy is a customized training program. She defines goals for each group based on its commercial history, technical skills, the quality of its products, and the markets to which it has access. A training assessment tailors sessions to the group's needs. For example, Olga Silvia taught one group of women in an eco-tourism zone to produce embroidery with designs of local wildlife or endangered species. The training addresses many topics, such as improving quality, updating traditional designs, creating new designs, organizing production, accounting for costs, and learning about the history of embroidery in the Yucatan. Olga Silvia has encouraged a moderate degree of specialization that improves output while allowing the women to retain a sense of ownership of the final product.

Olga Silvia has received help from foreign volunteers and experts. The Danish charity CARITAS helped arrange the sale of Mexican embroidery in Denmark's Museum of Modern Art and has assisted in securing a contract to produce linens for several Danish churches. Danish experts, including a professional embroiderer and a software specialist, trained Olga Silvia to use a computer package that facilitates the design of embroidery. A volunteer from the United States will help her with marketing and with designing a website. Olga Silvia's work has also enjoyed the support of government institutions such as The Artisans' House, the Secretary of Social Development, Instituto Nacional Para La Cultura y Las Artes (INCA), which is dedicated to training in Yucatan, and the Secretary of Agricultural Reform.

Despite all this help from the outside, the embroiderers are maintaining, even rediscovering, their ancient traditions. Olga Silvia has encouraged the use of local cultural themes, which lend the embroidery a distinctive appeal. The women have maintained the traditional names for each design which keeps alive both their language and visual culture. Many of the women have organized visits to archeological sites to see the original rock carvings that inspired their designs–carvings that were the work of their ancestors.

During the next five years, Olga Silvia hopes to create the first professional embroidery school in Mexico. She has investigated the history of embroidery in the Yucatan from the pre-Hispanic era to the present, to understand its cultural, economical, and social roles. Similar studies, she believes, should be performed in all Mexican states with weaving industries -- Veracruz, Chiapas, and Campeche -- to understand the idiosyncrasies of each and to transform embroidery into a source of employment.

The Maya Chuy project has created work for one hundred embroiderers, who now earn decent wages that are three to six times larger than their former incomes. Olga Silvia and her employees have trained three hundred other women, who in turn have trained still others. Olga Silvia realizes that these four hundred women are only a small proportion of all who embroider, but now that she has refined her ideas and systematized her procedures, she plans to extend her reach. A grant will pay for constructing training centers that will offer seven courses a year, with twenty students per course. As a prerequisite for the training, each woman must belong to a cooperative. This will allow Olga Silvia to leverage the training program to improve the livelihoods of more than fourteen hundred women during the year. In addition, she has extended her efforts to the neighboring state of Quintana Roo, where a group of pig farmers from Guatemala has asked her to train them in embroidery. Olga Silvia plans to expand the project to other regions with the help of partner organizations and government outreach programs.

As a child, Olga Silvia Teran Contreras traveled frequently with her father to regions of Mexico where indigenous people live. A lifelong fascination with local dress and customs led her to choose anthropology as her university major, and her writings about life in the Yucatan have given her a reputation as a serious scholar. On her visits to Yucatan communities, Olga was saddened by the fact that embroidery hadn't developed into a lucrative profession for indigenous people. Later, Olga visited Denmark where she observed that embroidery was a profession, promoted by Queen Magarita herself. Olga's husband encouraged her to take charge and improve the state of embroidery in Mexico rather than just complain. Although she began with very little experience in the weaving industry, she soon found innovative solutions to the problems of Mexico's indigenous people. The founder and president of Tun Ben Kin and the Maya Chuy project, Olga Silvia coordinated the first Congress of Mayan Women organized by UNIFEM and has served as adviser to groups of women embroiderers. In 1999, she received the Zacil Prize for "Female Entrepreneur of the Year."