THANKS TO ALL WHO DONATED
BLANKETS FOR THE MIXTEC COMMUNITY IN VALLE VERDE, TIJUANA
Hello friends,
sisters and brothers—
On behalf of all
the Mixtec indigenous people of Valle Verde, Tijuana, Mexico, thank you all for
your generous donations of blankets. As the cold weather hits this winter, all
the people of the community are extremely grateful for your solidarity.
When we visited
the ladies with the “Mujeres Mixtecas” clothing coop in Valle Verde to drop off
the blankets, the ladies asked us to pass on a short message to everyone who
donated these blankets. Here are the messages, translated:
Doña Berta:
“We really want to thank all of you a
great deal for helping us out with these blankets. May God bless you all for
this; you have really helped us a lot. Warm regards to all of you.”
Doña Francisca:
“May God bless all of you for sharing
these blankets with us. We are very glad to be in touch with Daniel, David and
all the rest of the people who have been in contact with us, because through
them, we’re able to be in contact with all the rest of you out there. We may
not know where you are or what your names are, but we thank God that you have
all somehow managed to get in touch with Daniel and David and found out about
this blanket drive, and donated these blankets. We are extremely thankful to
all of you for that.”
Doña Berta also
shared with us a traditional Mixtec folk saying:
"Rataá va'aíní kixia mií suértera."
[TRANSLATION] “When a person has a good heart, good luck
comes to them naturally.”
Again, thank you
very much for helping out our Mixtec sisters and brothers in Valle Verde with
the donated blankets.
Here is a video
of the women expressing their thanks, in their native Mixtec language:
In fact, we’d
like to invite you to get to know the amazing ladies who are part of the
“Mujeres Mixtecas” sewing coop a little better. On February 23, Saturday, we
will be having a get-together with them at a private school in Tijuana.
The ladies will
be serving homemade, traditional Guerrero-style mole, and will have some
samples of the clothing they make. We will learn from them more of their
stories—how they came to Tijuana from southern Mexico—and will learn about the
ancient and beautiful Mixtec culture. We will be having a “language exchange”
time when we will all teach each other some phrases and words from the Mixtec,
English and Spanish languages. It will be a great time—we invite all of you to
join us.
Here is a link to
the invitation online:
We’d also like to
invite you to stay in touch with the ladies from the “Mujeres Mixtecas” coop.
There are many ways to do this. Any time you would like to meet them, we’ll be
glad to take you down to their shop in Tijuana to get to know them
firsthand—they really are amazing people. And they make beautiful clothing:
artisanal blouses, school uniforms, aprons, dresses, and many other articles of
clothing. If anybody has ideas for possible buyers—people who would like to
support a worker-owned coop by buying directly from these Mixtec women, rather
than buying from a corporation that uses sweatshops and pays miserable
wages—please, let us know.
Here is a link to
a blog for the “Mujeres Mixtecas” coop, with some basic info on the coop:
Some photos from
the shop:
And some info on
the clothing the women create:
Feel free to
contact us with any questions, comments, ideas, etc. In the meantime, if you
only do one thing to follow up with
the folks who have been so helped by these blanket donations—please, we ask you
to pass
on the above website to anybody you can think of, to let them know about the
“Mujeres Mixtecas” coop.
Thank you again,
and best regards to all of you from the people of Valle Verde!
Tchá’vindo!
(Thank you)
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