Sequim-based group sees its work first-hand in southern Mexico

Published 4:16 am Wednesday, August 13, 2008

ZINACANTAN, Chiapas, Mexico — Wrapped in a new shawl, she looked as though she’d been draped in the wild orchids and azure sky of Chiapas.

Judith Pasco received a gift this summer from the Mujeres de Maiz — the women of corn, that multifaceted food — who belong to a sewing cooperative in Zinacantan, a rural Chiapas town near San Cristobal de las Casas.

The shawl is a kind of mantle, intensely embroidered in deep blue and violet. It’s the type Mayan women and girls wear when walking to church, to the market or into the hills above their town.

There could be no better-fitting gift for Pasco, the Sequim Spanish teacher who three years ago formed the Mujeres de Maiz Opportunity Foundation, a nonprofit provider of scholarships to young Chiapas women.