Zimmermann seeks agreement with members of the Mazatec community

by Mexico News Daily

An Australian fashion brand has offered to pay compensation to indigenous artisans whose designs it was accused of plagiarizing and proposed negotiating an agreement to allow it to sell its culturally “inspired” garments.

Zimmermann, a fashion house that has stores around the world, withdrew a dress from its 2021 collection last month after facing accusations by members of the Mazatec community in the Cañada region of Oaxaca that it plagiarized the design of a traditional huipil, a loose-fitting tunic commonly worn by both indigenous and non-indigenous women in Mexico.

The cut of the company’s Riders Paneled tunic dress, the birds and flowers embroidered on it and its colors all resemble a traditional Mazatec huipil. 

Zimmermann apologized for using the design “without [giving] appropriate credit to the cultural owners of this form of dress and for the offense this has caused.”

“Although the error was unintentional, when it was brought to our attention …, the item was immediately withdrawn from all Zimmermann stores and our website. We have taken steps to ensure this does not happen again in future,” it said in a social media post.

Days after the company issued its apology, members of the Oaxaca Institute of Crafts (IOA), a state government organization, spoke with Malcolm Carfrae, a fashion consultant hired by Zimmermann to liaise with Mexican artisans.

“He told us that his intention is to offer a direct apology to the artisans and the community of Huautla de Jiménez because they recognized that [the dress design] was plagiarized,” IOA director Nadia Clímaco said Monday.

“And they want to provide some economic compensation,” she said, adding that the IOA was asked to determine an appropriate amount.

“We let him know that we can’t take that decision,” Clímaco said, explaining that the institute would need to consult with the Mazatec artisans.

She said that Zimmermann subsequently sent a letter to the IOA in which the company raised the possibility of the Mazatec community granting permission for its tunic dress to be sold. (It was advertised for US $850 before being withdrawn.)

Clímaco said the fashion brand proposed commercialization “under the terms that the members of the community consider appropriate.”

The IOA chief said the proposal was taken to artisans in Huautla de Jiménez, located near the border with Puebla, because only they can decide if they want to effectively license their traditional designs. A decision could take some time because there are different opinions in the town, Clímaco said.

Some people say “my identity is priceless,” she said, while others, acknowledging the difficult economic situation they currently face, were more open to the idea of negotiating an agreement to allow Zimmermann to sell its dress.

To date there is no agreement, Clímaco said, adding that the IOA is providing legal advice to the artisans.

Source: El Universal (sp)

Book enables modern readers to connect to an ancient story

by Rich Tenorio

When Ilan Stavans first learned about the Popol Vuh as a teenager growing up in Mexico City, he was fascinated by the millennia-old Mayan tale. Decades later, Stavans reconnected with the text and saw it as comparable to other foundational narratives from world civilizations, such as the Bible. Yet he noted a key difference: unlike these classics, the Popol Vuh had remained obscure.

Now Stavans — an acclaimed scholar of the humanities, Latin America and Latino culture at Amherst College — is helping modern readers connect to the ancient story that began as an oral tradition among the K’iche people, who are part of the Maya.

Stavans has released Popol Vuh: A Retelling, a book-length version of the narrative that he hopes will interest a mainstream audience. The book features illustrations from Salvadoran artist Gabriela Larios, whose artwork provides a crucial dimension, Stavans said, as does the foreword by Homero Aridjis, Mexico’s former ambassador to UNESCO.

“My intent in this retelling was to insert the Popol Vuh into the canon of world classics, sagas that represent the birth and development of a nation,” Stavans said. “I have always been puzzled by the total absence of pre-Columbian indigenous aboriginal narratives that tell the story of the various peoples of the Americas prior to the arrival in 1492 of the Europeans in a way that is comparable to The Iliad and the Odyssey, to the Nordic sagas of Beowulf and other similar stories, and even to religious texts like the Bible, the Ramayana, and the Quran.”

Stavans drew multiple comparisons between the Popol Vuh and these texts.“If you see the Ramayana, if you see the Bible, you see literary texts that tell us stories about the gods and humans interacting,” he said. “Stories like the Ramayana are about genealogy, explaining how a people acquired its identity, what its mission is in life.

”That’s what he sees in the Popol Vuh, which he describes as “a beautiful story” about “how the world was created. At the center of it are fallible humans. Within the humans, there’s a kind of selection of one people that is going to honor the deities. That people are the K’iche.”

Stavans lamented that when he was younger, the Popol Vuh and another foundational Mayan text, the Chilam Balam, were treated as anthropological or archaeological items, not as books. He said that he was “angry at the way [that] throughout Mexican history, indigenous cultures had been, like many people in time, fossilized, turned into fossils, seen as historical artifacts, historical entities, not incorporated in any meaningful way into the lens of daily life in Mexico, and even less so in Mexican culture.”

by the El Reportero‘s news services

After a two-year courtship, and rising above offers from multiple competing labels, Warner Latina and Warner Records have jointly signed an exclusive global distribution deal with Puerto Rican rising star Myke Towers and his independent label, Whiteworld Music.

The deal was spearheaded by Warner Music Latina president Iñigo Zabala, who brought Towers to the attention of Warner Records global heads at a time when music in Spanish is a global force, a fact highlighted by Towers’ remarkable success as an independent artist.

In the past 12 months alone, the 27-year-old has placed seven songs on the top 10 of Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart, two songs on Billboard’s Global Ex U.S. chart, six songs on the Spotify 200 chart (more than any other Latin act) and is currently No. 8 on YouTube’s Global artist chart while his video of “Bandido” with Juhn is No. 2 on the service’s Global chart this week.

No wonder that while Towers sings in Spanish, Warner sees him as a completely global act. “He is one of our most important signings of the past year,” Warner Records Co-Chairman & COO Tom Corson says bluntly.

That import has already been tested, most impactfully in “Me gusta,” the Anitta track released last September where Warner paired Towers with the Brazilian star and Cardi B.

As it turns out, Towers has been on Warner Latin’s sights since 2017, when he first started releasing music. But the label’s approach began in earnest in 2019, after he collaborated with Warner Music Latina group Piso 21.

“We formally contacted him in April 2019, when he released his single ‘Si Se Da,’” says Zabala, president of Warner Music Latin America & Iberia. “At that point, it was clear he was a very, very special artist. We always presented to them [Towers’ management] that we were the better partner to help them globalize Myke’s music. It’s been a long conversation, but it’s been very successful.”