Guatemala · Textile / Embroidery
Pot (K'iche', "blouse"); k'ot / kab-awil (double-headed eagle motif)
A brocade-and-embroidery tradition of Santo Tomás Chichicastenango centered on the k'ot, a double-headed eagle motif understood by K'iche' Maya weavers as representing a great god of two natures — one face turned toward good, one toward evil — a design scholars trace to Habsburg Spain's imperial double-headed-eagle heraldry, introduced after the conquest and resyncretized into an earlier, pre-colonial Maya symbolic vocabulary that had used a double-headed serpent scepter to express the same concept of cosmic duality.
Risk level: Endangered · Not currently inscribed on a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list; Guatemala is a State Party to the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ratified 2006) and could nominate this technique in the future.
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