Mujeres Sembrando la Vida: Juana has been in MSV for 21 years!

My name is Juana Hernández Sánchez. I’ve been in the cooperative for 21 years. I didn’t study at school and only speak Tsotsil, no Spanish. Someone has to translate what I am saying in Tsotsil to Spanish to English. 

Being in the cooperative has helped me and all the artisans a lot. Being part of the group that has helped organize all the MSV artisans has completely changed my life. We had to learn so many things: organization of people, training, how the products looked, and how to maintain the quality so that we could have good clients.

I don’t speak Spanish or English, so I can’t work with the clients, but I like helping to organize the other artisans.  Since we started over 20 years ago, the style of our weaving and embroidery sand how we finish our final products has changed a lot.

In fact, everything is completely different now than when we began, but I would like to continue. Recently we were invited by an organization to sign up and sell directly online by using their phones. Some of the women in our group have signed up and are learning how to use this new method.