Saturday, February 9, 2013

Thank you message to all who participated in the blanket drive


THANKS TO ALL WHO DONATED BLANKETS FOR THE MIXTEC COMMUNITY IN VALLE VERDE, TIJUANA
  
[Para la versión en español, haz clic aquí] 


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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