The factual information below about Pachacuti was provided by the company. Pachacuti is a member of Coop America and the Fair Trade Federation.

Carol Stengel is the owner of Pachacuti, a business that sells fair trade jewelry and textiles. She buys products from artisans who live in the small coastal towns and highland villages of Mexico. Juan Quezada, one of these artisans, imitates the 1000-year-old pottery techniques of the Paquime Natives. His work so closely resembles the ancient shards they left behind that upon discovering his pieces in a secondhand store in 1976, anthropologist Spencer MacCallum mistook them for originals.

In February, Carol joined a weavers tour with Traditions Mexico in order to visit some of these artisans. There in the Mayan highlands, she met Dona Maria, who lost her husband and infant son many years ago. There were difficult years as she tried to raise her older, surviving son alone, years without enough food, land, or money. But she was able to manage through income from weaving textiles. She said, “I work at this and that and I don’t earn a lot of money, but at least I have [enough] to buy beans and corn and meat.” In a small town in southern Mexico, Carol met Dona Justina, who learned to weave at age eight and is still at it at age 76, using shellfish, tree bark, and other natural material to create the dyes for her work.

For Carol, selling the work of these artisans is much more than a source of income. Both entrepreneur and Spanish teacher, she contributes part of the profit from her business to Latino scholarship programs. This year, Pachacuti has begun work on a weaver’s scholarship for secondary students in Rock Point, AZ as an incentive for adolescents to continue learning traditional Navajo crafts, pairing Navajo elders with students in a mentoring relationship. Carol is keenly aware that the pieces she sells embody personal history, relationships to people and nature, and cultural heritage, remarking that, “So much of what we do in fair trade is . . . soulful. Fair trade businesses provide the economic support needed for cultural and spiritual survival—one family, one village at a time.”

As Dona Justina's visitors were preparing to leave and move on to their next destination, the elderly artisan asked, “When will you be back?” Carol explained the significance of Dona Justina's question to me in an email, saying, “Everything and everyone stopped. Her words hung heavily in the air. If tourists do not come to her remote village, there is no money. If there is no money, there is little food.”

Fair trade businesses like Pachacuti create a link between artisans like Dona Justina and the outside world, providing basic necessities for the artisans and enriching the rest of us with beautiful traditions that have been handed down for centuries.

These are a few samples of the fair trade jewelry and textiles Carol has available. You will find more at Pachacuti.