Civic Engagement, Fair Trade, and Indigenous Gender Politics in Guatemala:
Caryn Maxim Lecture Series

Spring 2023

Caryn Maxim will share her experience of working with the Maya Mam people through Grupo Cajola in Guatemala in this weekly lecture series on Tuesdays, 6pm-6:30pm (Room G126) starting on January 31, 2023 (ending on April 18). With a specific focus every week, this 10- week lecture series will detail the processes, struggles, and rewards of starting up and working with a Fair-Trade textile business in Cajola, Guatemala. She will be touching on

• various aspects of civic engagement work including cultural relativism, power relations, and dealing with NPO structures
• on-the ground workings of a Fair-Trade business
• cross-cultural experiences
• gender dynamics
• indigenous politics

Please bring your class to the lecture in person or have your students watch the recordings, which will be posted on the website (TBA) afterwards.

The schedule for the talk is below. You can also listen to the lecture via WebEx by clicking on the link below:

https://calendar.google.com/calendar/event?action=TEMPLATE&tmeid=MjhvNjdpdWhvbGwwdTcxc2FyaXB1dDVia3BfMjAyMzAxMzFUMjMwMDAwWiBuZG9lcnJAcmFtYXBvLmVkdQ&tmsrc=ndoerr%40ramapo.edu&scp=ALL

If you have any questions, please contact Neriko Doerr (ndoerr@ramapo.edu). Please spread the word as well. Thank you!

*Sponsored by Humanities and Global Studies, Gross Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies, the Presidential Committee on Campus Sustainability, the Women’s Center, and Ramapo Green.

Lecture Schedule

Week 1: Jan 31 | Setting the stage: Connecting with Grupo Cajola
Guatemala history, Cajola background, formation of Grupo Cajola, how I connected with Grupo Cajola

Recording of the Caryn Maxim Lecture 1  Password for accessing the recording: uCKdnWg2

Week 2: Feb 7 | How did Maya Mam Weavers start? Organizing women 
organizing women (how), Equipo Maiz, monthly meetings, comments when women withdrew “this isn’t fast enough”; impact of poverty on culture, impact of NGO project model, survival, pessimism, lack of self esteem, impact of the war, impact of male domination, money isn’t dominant motivator

Recording of the Caryn Maxim Lecture 2 Password for accessing the recording: ZrYpgtt3

Week 3: Feb 14 | Getting Started/Starting from Zero
illiteracy, initial training, subsequent training in new technical and business skills, learning to come to work every day, learning to meet sales demands, exposure to new things, addressing the isolation, no community models exist; value of training: new skills were not always appreciated, learning when to stop “falseria” , need for training in Mam, their mother tongue, impact of isolation (trip to Antigua, sales event in Solola)

Recording of the Caryn Maxim Lecture 3 Password for accessing the recording: xJZmP7E3

Week 4 Feb 21 | Cultural context: How a bat became a cat
how do you know what is the culture, how do you know where to break with the culture. culture is work from home, institutionalized by legal cooperative, Decision: work in our workshop: “imposition” versus benefits we gained from being in one place, monthly meetings, pay in cash; how to adapt my knowledge and experience in business to a situation where more than half the women were illiterate, influence of machismo, adapt to the culture, money is not the most important motivator

Recording of the Caryn Maxim Lecture 4 Password for accessing the recording: Bm3WuHxh

Week 5 Mar 7 |  Learning quality & industrial sewing machines; learning metrics, deadlines
fear of electric machines, trade off between quality and pay, story of Blanca as quality control

Recording of the Caryn Maxim Lecture 5 Password for accessing the recording: HzKap93W

Week 6 Mar 21 | What is fair pay?
how to measure work, how to track work in an illiterate environment, how to calculate pay, how to explain to the women how they are paid, what are fair wages

Recording of the Caryn Maxim Lecture 6 Password for accessing the recording: pRJBsdq6

Week 7 Mar 28 | Intersection of Education with Development
entrance of women with secondary education opened the door to learning the skills to manage the work. Sales & marketing, bookkeeping, production, new product development; in addition to technical skills, they needed to learn new ways to interact with each other. Culture does not facilitate “supervision”

Recording of the Caryn Maxim Lecture 7 Password for accessing the recording: kYSMvtA5

Week 8 Apr 4 The need to extract myself: transition from owner to customer
Sales & Marketing Council key inflection point: begin the transition to owners my challenges (getting it out of my head) and the women’s challenges (accepting responsibility)

Recording of the Caryn Maxim Lecture 8 Password for accessing the recording: tRn67bcx

Week 9 Apr 11 Challenges of growth
learning to manage work of other cooperatives, working through the pandemic, challenge of ownership

Recording of the Caryn Maxim Lecture 9 Password for accessing the recording: CgHvGpM3

Week 10 Apr 18 Conclusions
intersection of migration & development, intersection of culture & development, intersection of education & development

Recording of the Caryn Maxim Lecture 10 Password for accessing the recording: pYrBXdy2