Manifesto
Some ideas are not thought — they are received.
They arrive as a gentle whisper or a flash of certainty.
Sometimes, as Elizabeth Gilbert says,
they land on a person, hoping to be brought to life.
That’s how Souvenirs de Identidad was born:
as a living entity that came to me,
and I chose to care for it
— even when resources were scarce
and the path was uncertain.
It all started with a single pareo.
Just one.
The desire to create pareos with Guatemalan identity,
with soul, with history.
Four years later, that desire beats
louder than ever.
One of the pareos I designed revolves around the word thank you,
written in the 24 languages of Guatemala.
Months of searching led me to understand that those words,
together with the inspiration drawn from Tibetan prayer flags,
were not meant to remain still.
Like prayers to the wind,
the “thank yous” travel,
they settle on the earth, the grass, the sand,
like an altar to Pachamama.
In 2023, I took it to the peaceful protests
where the ancestral communities of our country were safeguarding our democracy.
And I saw how their eyes lit up
when they recognised their word, their thank you.
That was when I knew:
this was not merely an object.
It was an offering.
It was memory.
It was a bridge.
Then came the table placemats and the postcards.
The “thank yous” travel and rest beneath the plate,
giving thanks to the Earth
and to the one who prepares the food.
They travel and build bridges
between countries, cultures, and tables around the world.
Hoy, Souvenirs de Identidad no es una tienda, al igual que la pipa de Magritte.
It is a gesture.
A collection of poem-objects,
memory-objects,
bridge-objects
between the ancestral and the everyday,
between the intimate and the collective,
between what we give
and what we receive.
It does not matter whether it is a pareo,
a postcard,
a table placemat,
or a scented plaster object.
Each piece is a way of saying:
Thank you.
In every Guatemalan language.
Thank you, from the soul.
