While María, a Rarámuri artisan, counts the days to finish the napácha (traditional blouse) that she will sell at a price that won’t last her a month, in New York, Nikki Chasin is offering an exact copy of her work for $750 (just over 15,000 pesos).
The difference, besides the cost, is that the American designer calls the garment a zigzag dress. She never mentioned María or the community from which she originates, nor the sacred mountains that inspired those patterns. This is not an isolated case: it is the rule of a system that turns the cultural heritage of Mexico’s indigenous peoples into stolen goods.
In reality, it is an extractivist practice that knows no borders. Last year, Louis Vuitton, the prestigious French fashion house active since the mid-19th century, presented identical replicas of traditional blouses from a region of Romania as part of its Resort collection. Despite the campaign to prevent its sale, the company neither gave credit nor apologized.
They never said anything; they simply ignored the fact that they were appropriating something, denounces Olivia Meza, a specialist at NGO Impacto, a Mexican non-governmental organization committed to the sustainable development of indigenous peoples.
Based in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, this civil body has recorded through its Traditional Fridays platform that, between 2012 and 2025, at least 31 international brands or designers, and a few national ones, have appropriated designs, iconography, or traditional garments from indigenous cultures in our country, bringing the total to 41 documented cases of cultural misappropriation, as the NGO calls it, to date.
The French brands Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Isabel Marant; the American brands Carolina Herrera, Ralph Laurent, Nike, J. Marie Collections, and Madewell; China’s Shein, and Spain’s Mango, Desigual, Intropia, and Zara are among the global brands that have resorted to this practice.
Of these, J. Marie Collections and Zara have been the most frequent, with four instances, most recently last year, in the case of the Spanish-speaking brand. Outside of this list, other prestigious international companies are also mentioned, such as France’s Hermès and the US-based Levi’s.
Of Mexican origin, there is the case of designer Pineda Covalin, who in 2014 reproduced designs from Tenango de Doria, Hidalgo, on bags, as well as a designer of Oaxacan origin who collaborates with the US brand Etia.
The latter works with artisans from San Juan Colorado, one of the 570 municipalities in that state, to make huipiles. But instead of selling them as such, she renamed them kaftans, a traditional garment worn in Muslim countries, thus committing, in the words of Olivia Meza, the sacrilege of erasing the origin of these garments and the participation of their makers.
“The names are not only incorrect, but also a type of appropriation. At the design, business, and marketing levels, there needs to be more awareness; also, more culture, and knowledge of what is being sold and how to correctly name products,” adds the fashion designer, journalist, and activist.
In the end, this designer also failed to credit the makers of these garments, only stating that she works with artisans from San Juan Colorado, and that is denying credit, turning one’s back on the original creators. In cases like hers, nothing is being designed; it’s merely a bridge to sell the products, and that also has a knock-on value.
Merchandise for sale at Jardín Allende, in the Del Carmen Coyoacán neighborhood, and the Original Textile Art Encounter held at Los Pinos in November 2024. Photos by Roberto García Ortiz and Yazmín Ortega Cortés
Non-judicial Complaints
After clarifying to this newspaper that so far, complaints of cultural misappropriation against some of these brands in Mexico have not been brought before the courts, the Social Communications Department of the federal Ministry of Culture (SC) reported that two are currently underway, noting that it could not provide further details because they are private relationships and are still under negotiation.
One of the most recent national cases of misappropriation is that of the company ¡Ay Güey!, which uses fabrics reminiscent of the embroidery of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec on the interior of one of its jacket styles, as documented by Senator Susana Harp, who is not only one of the leading public figures who has spoken out against this form of cultural extractivism, but has also taken concrete actions to combat it.
In 2015, the Oaxacan singer and activist discovered in a New York, United States, a design identical to the huipiles of Santa María Tlahuitoltepec—a community located in the Mixe mountains of Oaxaca—designed by Isabel Marant as part of her fall-winter collection.
That was the trigger for her to act, admits Susana Harp, who during her first term as a senator of the Republic, from 2018 to 2024—she is currently in her second, which ends in 2030—promoted a substantive Copyright Law.
The amendment meant that elements of Indigenous culture and identity, including designs and clothing, were no longer considered part of the public domain and were legally equated with any literary or artistic work. Previously, that law allowed the use of any element of any Mexican popular culture; no permission was required, she points out.
However, Susana Harp’s main contribution as a legislator in this area was her key role in the creation and promotion of the Federal Law for the Protection of the Cultural Heritage of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Peoples and Communities (LFPPCPCIA), which came into effect on January 18th, 2022, and is considered “a historic step for Mexico to stop being culturally ‘looted.'”
This law recognizes and guarantees the cultural heritage and collective intellectual property of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples and communities, prohibits any act that affects the integrity of this heritage, establishes that the economic benefits of the commercialization of cultural heritage must be equitably redistributed among communities, and creates a system for the protection of cultural heritage and a registration system.
Stated simply, it prohibits brands or individuals from using the ancestral knowledge, sacred symbols, and cultural expressions of these peoples and communities without their permission or without giving them credit and profits.
Double grievance
With this law, we include something that wasn’t visible in our legal system: collective rights, emphasizes the legislator and artist, who maintains that misappropriation not only deprives artisans of vital income, but also violates their identity and values.
There are plagiarisms that are deeply hurtful and painful for communities, as companies appropriate and sometimes abuse or misuse elements that are sacred to them, she asserts.
It’s not just the economic implication of directly selling less, something that comes out of their hands, but, sometimes, they are elements that have to do with their worldview; therefore, the grievance is double, because it’s an appropriation that generates enormous indignation. They’re even an open wound, she maintains, citing, for example, the Moneyman financial institution commercial that, in 2023, compared the Papantla Flyers ritual to a loan from that institution and stated that the two have in common that they generate zero interest.
The senator laments: “It’s a mockery, an affront; they didn’t even understand that it’s not a spectacle; it’s a spiritual practice.”
“Better not to get involved.”
For anthropologist Marta Turok, the lack of the respective regulations under copyright and federal laws protecting the cultural heritage of Indigenous peoples and communities is one of the main obstacles to protecting and safeguarding this important cultural heritage of the country’s indigenous peoples.
It’s a view Harp agrees with, although she qualifies by stating that, to date, the law has worked even without regulations.
Considered in Mexico and abroad to be the foremost specialist in traditional textiles of national origin, Marta Turok goes further and believes that both legislative contributions, although well-intentioned, lack viable mechanisms to prevent abuse or benefit the communities.
And she ventures that, far from curbing misappropriation, they could harm artisans, since, according to the LFPPCPCIA, community assemblies are the legitimate body to authorize the use of heritage.
She warns that these structures, in many areas, have been weakened by political parties or churches, or are influenced by them, and that they do not always include individual artisans, which could lead to their displacement.
“The spirit with which a law is made is one thing, and when a lawyer tells you: ‘It’s better not to even get involved,’ because the tendency in interpreting the law is toward community assembly agreements,” she points out. And where are the artisans or dancers, those who practice this cultural expression, when the concept is that (this heritage) belongs to everyone, because everyone in some way identifies with that tradition, with that iconography?’’ she adds.
She emphasizes that one of the current risks is that economic collaboration with the creators of these communities will be halted: If a designer pays a group of embroiderers well, but the assembly demands employment for the entire community, the project becomes unviable.
In the anthropologist’s opinion, the underlying question is how can the direct benefit to the creator be balanced with recognition and some compensation to the community? In other words, how can this law benefit all parties and not be a self-serious snake?
Invisible because it is obvious
The misappropriation of garments and designs of Indigenous origin is very common in Mexico and so commonplace that it often goes unnoticed, says Olivia Meza. Throughout history, there has been a great deal of abuse, inequality, and malpractice, whether due to ignorance or neglect, in this area, which has only recently, in the last five or seven years, been becoming more active at the government level, notes the head of Traditional Fridays.
Cultural misappropriation is extremely common, more so than we think, and it doesn’t necessarily have to involve a luxury brand or an international designer. It’s just that Chinese companies are now producing Mexican-style textiles on a large scale, imitating loom and embroidery techniques, she warns. “The artisans themselves sell them; you can see them in Oaxaca, Chiapas, practically all over Mexico. That’s why I say it’s very common and there’s no regulation whatsoever. The artisans prefer them because they sell more easily, because they’re cheaper, and because it doesn’t take them as long to make the garment.’’
A blouse on a backstrap loom takes them up to a month or two weeks, if they’re very fast. In Oaxaca, they sell fabrics with designs from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, from Juchitán, those embroidered flowers and chain styles, but already printed so you can just cut them and use them however you want. But they’re Chinese textiles, and they’re already sold everywhere.”
According to the journalist and activist, society’s role is crucial in addressing this thorny issue. She questions the fact that, while luxury brands exoticize textiles and designs of indigenous origin, the stigma persists on the streets of Mexico that artisanal products are of low quality and should be cheap.
An authentic huipil can cost thousands of pesos, she adds, but the market prefers imitations. If an artisan copied the design of one of these major international brands, they would immediately be sued. But they are stripped and the world looks the other way.
While all this is happening, in the Sierra de Chihuahua, María has finally finished her napácha, after several days of work. She manages to sell it at a good price: 2,000 pesos, thanks to a cooperative that brought her to Mexico City to participate in Original, the cultural movement and gathering organized by the cooperative to raise awareness about the value of artisanal work, promote it, and encourage its fair trade.
Original article by Ángel Vargas, La Jornada, April 23rd, 2025.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.