These are not the codes that have garnered recent fame and criticism, in major mass publications over the past few months; but rather, an ancient and complex allocation of values and symbols to transmit messages and legends, spun with most beautiful colors of the Central American forest.

Through their costumes, the Mayan peoples of Guatemala convey codes of gender, identity, hierarchy or simply exhibit a impressive catalogue of multicolored textile motifs. Still today and at a single glance, the Mayans can recognize the ciphers coded in the "huipiles", those beautiful blouses that announce among many other messages, the region and the village of the women that wear them.

The surrounding Nature as it is logical, has contributed to weaving the most extensive range of symbology. The jaguar, the quetzal and the serpent have been important symbols in the pre-Hispanic Central American vision of the cosmos. For the Mayans, the serpent usually represents depths and zeniths of the mountain ranges. Linked to fertility, the serpent also symbolizes the sacred energy that gives life to the universe and its representation is frequent in weaves of Chimaltenango, San Juan Socatepequez, Sololá and the Alta Verapaz.

The cultural philosophical syncretism resulting from the conquest and Spanish colonization, contributed to new symbols and motifs in the Mayan Code, such as the two headed eagle of the Hapsburgs; that appears in some of the textile weaves of Chichicastenango, Sololá and Guatemala. The concept duality is nevertheless, pre-Hispanic. Mayan rulers of a certain period used crowns adorned with two headed serpent icons, a motif in duality that usually represents good and evil; the Heavens and the Earth; the past and the future.

Of the pre-Hispanic era, is the textile representation of a tree as the Center of the Universe, later influenced by the Muslim vision of the Tree of Life, brought by Spaniards to the New World and weaved into numerous ceremonial costumes by the Mayans.

Myths and legends of the populace also live in Mayan weaves. The bird perched on a tobacco leaf, used so frequently in the embroidery, refers the legend of the Lord Sun who fell in love with the lady Moon, the daughter of the Lord of the Mountains and Valleys. It is said that the Lord Sun to get closer to the Moon, borrowed the feathers of a hummingbird and flew to tobacco plant, from where he could contemplate the Moon in all its splendor.

The complex array of messages that are hidden in Mayan huipiles, reflects the particular vision of weavers that do not work on an assembly line but in communion with their inner self, transferring through the rustic loom supported at their waist; the pain, the joy and the hope of a forgotten social history, the multiplying effect of tourism currencies has of the is has audaciously tried to stop.

Although today you can obtain quality textiles of Mayan symbols produced by machines; yet, the traditional handmade huipil, unique, inimitable, preserving the code of its millenarian culture; continues to be the pride and joy of its owner.

Quetzals and orchids, birds, lakes, mountains and volcanoes weaved in the brilliant polychrome of Mayan fabrics; are beautiful embroidered souvenirs that without becoming a load in your suitcase alleviate the plight of Mayan families in remote villages and the many deficiencies of their daily life.