Sucely Puluc is a young Mayan artist and an active participant in the National Weavers’ Movement in Guatemala. The strokes of her brush and her words express her idea that Mayan culture, as we know it at this time, is “living history.”  What does she mean? She explains that the remarkable survival of Mayan culture through the centuries has only been possible because Mayan people have (literally) woven love and cultural memory into the texture of their lives.

I know from my mother
That love has many shapes and colors

While pregnant with us
She wove our first huipiles
 
After her womb
A multicolored cloth sheltered me

Sucely's illustration and short poem illustrate these ideas. Her own mother weaves the clothes for the baby she carries in her womb. In doing this, she goes back to the beginning of time when Our Grandmother Xmucane, a central figure in Mayan mythology, ground corn to prepare the dough for the creation of human beings.  

Like human beings, weaving came forth at the beginning of time. Xmucane, Our Grandmother, appears in Sucely’s painting as an inspiration for her own mother as she walks the path that hundreds of generations of Mayan women have walked before her, from the time of creation to this day…. And, so, the cycle continues with every Mayan woman who weaves and every child who is born and lovingly wrapped in a warm and colorful handwoven cloth that carries the seeds of the culture within.