462 UNIT 4 MESOAMERICAN CULTURAL FEATURES
Figure 12.6 In the various economic crises that have gripped the region, women’s ingenuity
has proved fundamental to survival. Photograph provided by the authors.of their neighbors have. In their settlement, some of the poorest families have begun
to search for food in garbage dumps. One of the most difficult aspects of life for
women in Marta’s and Manuela’s situation is that mothers bear primary responsi-
bility for their children. Living together, the two women are able to alleviate some of
this burden by sharing their resources and making critical decisions together about
their own and their children’s welfare.
Intensifying household production has become another important survival strat-
egy (see Box 12.4). In contrast to poor mestizo women, indigenous women—al-
though poor and not formally educated—are often trained at a young age in their
community’s traditional arts, such as weaving and pottery making (Greenfield 2004).
In recent decades, artisan cooperatives have become a way for many women to sur-
vive the economic crisis. Women’s cooperatives have proliferated in the Mayan Indian
areas of Chiapas and Guatemala. Although earnings through cooperative sales are
not sufficient for most women, their symbolic importance cannot be underestimated.
Women state that working in cooperatives gives them moral and material support in
their struggle to remain on their lands while living with more dignity than would be
possible as displaced workers in the United States or other parts of Mexico (Eber
and Rosenbaum 1993; Eber and Tanski 2001;) (see Figure 12.7).
Women also find solidarity with other women and support for problems with
domestic violence and spousal abandonment in the many Protestant church com-