Abstract: | This article undertakes a discourse analysis of sponsoring agencies of the Nuevo Bordado Maya Comercial. In the name of the rehabilitation of cultures that have faced discrimination and of the respect of Indigenous women's rights, these agencies act on the frontiers between the local and the global, between the public and private, between ethnicities and between genders. An examination of such terms as sustainable development, empowerment, Maya woman, and Mayan culture and worldview reveals the co‐existence of contradictory ideologies (that are not devoid of essentialism) in relation to development, women and the construction of a transnational, pan‐Mayan identity. |