The project starts when we, Ambra and Rubi, met in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, in 2016. At the time, Ambra was working in a human rights center in defense of the indigenous peoples and Rubi was investigating social, environmental and gender inequalities as an anthropologist in San Juan Cancuc, a Tzeltal community belonging to the Maya ethnicity. There, she analyzed how women were using cultural practices to adapt to climate change, and there she discovered the smiling faces of women who were organizing themselves to escape the poverty in which they were living with their families. The first approaches were difficult: the language, the marginalization, the situation of extreme poverty and the structural gender-based violence that are felt in the streets of the community, made the intervention complicated, but Doña Juana and Victoria opened the doors of their community and those of their house. There, Rubi discovered their art. She was hugely impressed and became passionate about these women and their work. Motivated by a commitment of reciprocity, Rubi shared this passion with Ambra. We offered Victoria to make a video showing the process of the back-strap loom to thank her for her hospitality.
We started making several shots, interviewed women, visited their homes, as we became more and more aware of the reality of young Mayan women like Victoria living in the third poorest municipality in Mexico where 97% of the population lives in poverty, where more than half of the women are illiterate and do not speak Spanish and only 9% participates in an economic activity. Victoria’s story and her ability to steer an all-female weaver’s collective in these circumstances deserve much more than just a promotional video. Together with Victoria, we decided her story was worth a documentary. The investigative work and the communication that we maintained at a distance with Victoria allowed us to return to the community in September 2018.
“Junax, thread by thread” is a story of female legacy and empowerment. It shows how standing together can make quite the difference, and the resilience of whom suffers double institutional discrimination. Day by day and thread by thread, the women are working hard within a context of inequality and social injustice to create opportunities for the future generation.
The ultimate basis of the documentary “Junax”, meaning “Together” in Tzeltal language, is the union of three women from such diverse social and cultural background as are Victoria, Rubi and Ambra. Together, they imagined, conceived and developed “Junax, thread by thread” to give the world a feminine perspective of resilience, solidarity, creativity and work.
