Thinking Critically in Guatemala

When joining Peace Corps, I knew many challenges and difficulties would come along the way, but of course, I didn’t quite know what those challenges and difficulties would be. Almost a year into service, I can now say I have a reasonably good idea of what to expect most of the time- but that certainly does not rule out a surprise every-so-often.

Being a marketing volunteer for an artisan co-op has been an awesome experience so far - I absolutely love my job. I get to help out the ladies with color combinations, designs, and even help create and improve new and existing products. I consider myself a fairly creative person, but never in my life did I think I would be designing products people would actually wear… seriously.

Though it’s fun to get creative on my own, the whole idea of me being here is to teach the women how to be creative themselves, how to think outside of the box. You must be thinking “Well, geez, they’re artisans, they must be creative!” And they are, but not the same way we have learnt to be creative.

Hugh MacLeod once said, “Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten.”

Well, Hugh, you could not be more wrong.

It’s probably safe to say that about half of the 130 women I work with have never gone to school. Not for one day. Those women, by default, are illiterate. Another 25% of the women have had some education, perhaps two or three years. The remaining 25% have a few more years of education, but only one of two of the 130 artisans have actually received their high school diploma. Receiving your high school diploma in Guatemala is equivalent to receiving your university degree in the US, Canada, Europe, etc.

While doing a product improvement workshop in one of the more advanced communities, I showed them a shoulder bag that I had bought from another artisan co-op. The bag is similar to a product they make, but to avoid singling out the artisan herself and using a product from our group, I opted to use a product from a different co-op to get the ladies to see the flaws and suggest improvements without having to criticize one of their own.

I started by passing around the bag for them to see it in their own hands, examining it closely. Doña Victoria said it was a good bag, she wouldn’t change anything. I told her to give me three things she would change. After some thought, she said she would put a zipper on the outside, one in the inside, and make the strap adjustable, since some people are taller than others.

After Doña Victoria, the bag was passed to another 15 women, and they all made the same suggestions- two more zippers and an adjustable strap. Though I encouraged the women to propose different improvements to be made to the bag, they stuck with Doña Victoria’s three ideas.

Once I got the bag back, I presented my two suggestions. The first was for a better-quality zipper to replace the original one that closes the bag. The second was better tailoring work- I showed this to the ladies by showing the two inch hole in the side of the bag that none of them had mentioned, for some reason. They were all surprised when I showed them this.

I must say that kind of baffled me at first – of 16 women, not one picked up on the most obvious error. But after thinking it through, I realized that Doña Victoria was the first to point out her suggestions, and the rest followed. They either didn’t want to say anything different to what she had already said, or they really didn’t know what else to say, so they felt safe by repeating her over and over again.

I tried giving them the analogy of when they buy a new güipil (traditional embroidered shirt- what fashion is for indigenous Guatemalan women) for themselves. They try it on, make sure it’s sewn together properly and that it’s of good quality. Gringos do the same thing, I told them- if they are paying for something, they want to make sure it is a quality product.

Although the workshop didn’t go quite the way I had imagined it to go, it made me realize two things:

1. Creating analogies is probably the best way to get the ladies to understand a lot of concepts that are so foreign to them. They certainly are not stupid, they just need alternative ways of looking at things to make them see and understand a point more clearly.
2. As much as I thought learning how to “critically think” was so dumb when I was in grade school (I thought, “Everyone knows how to think, duh!”), I cannot express how much I realize now that it is such a vital part of our education. Just by working with the ladies, who are wonderful in so many different ways, I see how not having an education has hindered them from being so much more than they already are. It really makes me wonder sometimes what some of them could have become had they been given the chance to complete their studies.

Teaching business concepts to illiterate women is something that did not really cross my mind when I found out I was going to be a business advisor in Guatemala. We are so used to the “general knowledge” we have been gifted in our first world countries that we take for granted the littlest things that make the biggest difference. That is why it is so humbling when the ladies, many of whom are single mothers to families of 6+ children that cook, clean and manage the house, still come to workshops and make an effort to understand what is being presented to them and take part in dialogue with their colleagues, because the one thing they do understand is that they want to improve their quality of life.