colourful costumes

Thursday 3rd October 1985

San Pedro is authentically grubby, roughly cobbled streets are steep and narrow and full of farmyard smells. Brightly costumed locals always carrying something, ladies do it on their heads, men on their backs. The ladies wear a long loop of cloth which is wrapped around as a skirt but without getting into the loop, different dressing technique to asia. The men wear calf length home woven white trousers with a black dash running through the weave, other villages will have a different pattern. Rosa makes the San Pedro trouser fabric. Two woven lengths are needed for a pair of trousers at 5Q each, materials cost her 2Q and it takes her about a day and half to weave 2 lengths, in between cooking and childcare. The bottom half of the trousers are brightly embroidered with stylised animals. The women's tops are known as huipiles and are elaborately embroidered. Men's shirts are from similar material to the skirts. You can imagine how colourful the villages look on market day. The houses seem to have piped water but the washing water is chucked into the street. Many flies. Weave all day, painfully slow compared with Rosa.