José María Morelos, July 8th (Galu Comunicación).- María Asunción May Chi, 78 years old, is one of tens of craftswomen from the Mayan area (south of Quintana Roo state, next to Belize) who remains at home due to current health contingency, which severely affected their economy, but who is, anyway, ready to keep on working, as she does, since the quarantine began.
May Chi, who has been creating figures with local vine known as “Ochil” for more than 30 years, has perfected her technique during this three decades and has also created figures such as elephants, deers, turkeys, hippos, toucans, pigs, fruits or even of human beings, if clients demands it so.
According to her, the most complicated labor of this job is to look for the raw material, since she has to go into the jungle to find and obtain it, and due to her advanced age it is not easy, since she must obtain it from the trunks of the trees.
Among her anecdotes, she points out that she has had to figure out how to make figures that she has been requested, such as pigs, by making a wood replica of some she had in her house´s backyard.
Likewise, the figure of a toucan, which she also had in her house and served as a model to fulfill what they had asked her, as well as with other animals that have been challenges that she could overcome.
María Asunción hopes that the COVID-19 contingency will pass soon to be able to activate even more her sales, since many of the creations she makes are special requests and sold in the northern part of the state (Cancún and the Riviera Maya in the Mexican Caribbean), the main focus of coronavirus infection in this province of Quintana Roo.
