How Tourism Has Manipulated the Cultural Colors of Guatemala

By Grace McGuire

All interviews conducted through a translator.

When you Google search Guatemala, the first image that appears is of a well-documented tourist spot in Antigua. The picture shows the Santa Catalina Arch, a sharp-edged landmark painted a pleasant Easter yellow. Crowding the arch on each side are shops painted in a variety of bright colors to complement like stalwart crayons in their crayon box. The natural behemoth that is the Volcan de Agua, an impressive volcano, looms behind the arch, though the earthy greens do not stand out and shock as much as the artificial pastels surrounding it.  

This is representative of how tourism has changed the use of color in Guatemala in recent years.

Tourism has historically been important for Guatemala’s economy. The New York University Law Review reports that tourism provides $1.4 billion per year to Guatemala’s economy. Because of that, some towns and villages in Guatemala are trying to appeal to more to tourists. One way they are doing that is through color.

“Historically, color used to represent hierarchy and status,” Sergio Alonzo, a Mexican architect said in a 2022 article by Architectural Digest that reported on why the color pink is so prevalent in Latin America.“But then industrialization arrived, tourism arrived, and the local governments pushed to continue the use of these historical colors to promote tourism.”

That is exactly what has been happening in Guatemala for the last decade. In 2016 the village of Santa Catarina Palopó united to create the “pintando (painting) Santa Catarina Palopó” project. The village of 5,000 Indigenous Kaqchikel Maya people tried to combat poverty, as their main sources of income — fishing and agriculture — were no longer providing enough, forcing some of its men to emigrate to Guatemala City or even the United States to find better economic opportunities.

The community believed that tourism might provide a financial solution. In order to become an attractive tourist destination they were willing to paint their 850 houses and businesses, reports an article by Smithsonian Magazine. Though they were doing this to appeal to foreigners, the colors they chose were still deeply rooted in their indigenous culture—using earthy tones and sky blues to represent their connection to nature and using the vibrant hues of their huipiles, a traditional blouse, as inspiration.

“We wanted to paint the houses with the colors and figures that represent the community,” Stephany Blanco, the executive director of the project, said in the Smithsonian Magazine article. “A range of designs were created so that families can choose designs for their house that are representative of the family.”

Though communities such as Santa Catarina Palopó are becoming more colorful to impress tourists, they are trying to do so in a way that is authentic to their cultural understanding of color. 

Another important use of color in Guatemala is weaving. 

“Weaving is math, philosophy, creativity, colors and history,” Marta Couche, a weaver and member of the National Weaving Council, said while giving a presentation on cultural appropriation. “It is part of our identity.”

In Guatemala, the traditional weaving practices of the indigenous people are still very important and prevalent. While walking down the street in San Lucas Tolimán, for example, about half of the women you pass will be wearing hand-woven traditional clothing consisting of a huipil (blouse), corte (skirt) and a faja (a sash-like belt.) The work of making these clothes largely falls on the women.

In 2019 American University reported that less than 30% of poor, rural indigenous girls are enrolled in secondary school in Guatemala. This lack of education limits professional opportunities for women, so for many, weaving provides the answer.

Flavia Morales Lopez, a Kaqchikel woman from San Lucas Tolimán, has been the main provider for her three children and husband through weaving. Though she was a guerilla fighter who was present when the peace agreements that ended the Guatemalan civil war in 1996 were passed, she is illiterate, and Spanish is her second language after the Maya language, Kaqchikel.

“Despite all the fighting I did in the mountain (during the conflict)…I’m always at the bottom carrying this pain because I didn’t have the opportunity to study,” Morales Lopez said.

Now Morales Lopez is trying to support her own children’s educations, including her 15-year-old daughter Julia’s, by weaving. She gets up at 4 a.m. to start her day’s work, sometimes weaving day and night.

“For many women, weaving is the only way we can help the family,” Morales Lopez said. “We know that the weaving is the main form of income and it’s how we help our husbands and our family.”

Weaving has more cultural meaning to the Indigenous people than just a source of income, though. Each community of Indigenous people has a different color and design to differentiate themselves. For example, in San Lucas Tolimán, their traditional clothing displays red and white vertical stripes that then usually have patterns embroidered on top of it.

Silvia Galindo, a resident of San Lucas Tolimán who has a degree in backstrap weaving, knows the importance of color. “Color is very specific to the clothing of each town and is what distinguishes one town from the other,” she said. Galindo learned how to weave from her grandparents when she was only seven-years-old. To Galindo, designs or colors are “ways of representing nature and their indoor environment.”

 Virginia Borloz Soto elaborated on the cultural significance of weaving in an article in Escena, an academic journal based in Costa Rica.

 “The huipil, especially since pre-Hispanic times, tells us about the weaver--particularly her origin, her position in the social hierarchy. It is the reflection of their imagination, of their interiority.” Borloz gave examples that traditionally huipiles displaying open flowers implied that the wearer was married and so on, saying how the clothing represents social class, relationship status and more.

Flavia agreed that weaving is a way to preserve their traditions. 

“As women we do not want to lose our Maya culture,” Morales Lopez said. “My daughter Julia uses pants sometimes and I think it’s important to continue wearing our traditional garb.” 

Morales Lopez is currently weaving an elaborate huipil as a birthday present for Julia that will take her around eight days to finish. The rich blue and purple fabric is adorned with embroidered birds, a pattern Morales Lopez’s grandparents taught her as a child, to match the cool-toned corte Morales Lopez had already purchased.

Weaving may be a way to keep the Maya culture alive in the 21st century, but the cultural significance behind this type of colorful display is also being manipulated by foreigners and tourists, though. This happens through cultural appropriation.

 “We as women, we make the weaving our work, and then other women buy that work at a low price and then resell it in the United States at a premium,” Morales Lopez said. “The price we are getting for our weaving is not fair.”

 Cultural appropriation is the act of adopting a tradition as your own without offering any acknowledgement to the people who started and maintained the tradition. It is fine for an American tourist to wear a huipil or some part of the traditional clothing, but it should be purchased and then worn in a way that respects the weavers of the clothing, Couche explained during her presentation.

Sometimes non-Guatemalan clothing companies will take the design of one of the weaver’s textiles and steal it—mass producing it in factories at a rate a human weaver could never match, before selling it as their own pattern to foreign consumers while giving no credit or profits to the original weaver who created the pattern. Couche said that one machine in a factory can produce 3,000 huipiles a day, whereas a weaver can take up to 8 months creating one huipil of the same pattern. For that work, a weaver might get paid 200 quetzales (the national currency of Guatemala, it is equivalent to $26), but these huipiles could be sold internationally for 1,500 quetzales (almost $200.)

“Even though we are a little bit recognized, it’s not enough for the kind of work we do,” Morales Lopez said. “But we have to accept these low prices that we know our work is not worth because that is our situation and as women we don’t have a lot of options.” Morales Lopez said “it is out of necessity” that she accepts this meager income.

The cultural appropriation of weaving practices is just another way tourism and non-Guatemalan consumers have manipulated the unique use of colors in Guatemala.

For the Indigenous people in Guatemala, though, color has always been more than just pigment. It is a tradition. 

“We want to show who we are and this is part of our identity,” Galindo said. “As an Indigenous woman, I’m really happy people ask about me, because it allows me to tell them how much we use our intelligence, our creativity, mathematics and our art to do what we do.” At the time, Galindo was proudly wearing one of her own weaving creations with vertical stripes of rich blue representing San Lucas’ lake and bright white representing peace, and embroidered figurines representing different native animals of Guatemala.

 “I’m really, really proud to be an Indigenous woman and to wear my typical dress. I want to show the creativity and value that this clothing has.”