Second-hand clothing or “paca” (as called in Guatemala) is, without a doubt, part of our contemporary culture. For the younger generations it is a way to recycle garments in the face of the rampant fast fashion industry, to economize on clothing from luxury brands, and a trendy way to follow vintage fashion. For David Ramírez Cotón (Guatemala b. 1995), his approach to “pacas” is not from the trends; but from his personal history, specifically from his family economy that has been linked to his uncles' business in Mixco since his childhood.

The “paca” is a unit of measurement used to name 100 pounds of clothing bought from the United States. Many of these garments were discarded, donated to charity, or are unused items that were not sold in stores. Each piece has a story, a journey. There are some that have the name of their owners embroidered, or are group uniforms with their insignia, or are unique clothing modified by hand, or date back more than 50 years. In a bale you can find everything, and the economies that revolve around it speak both about entrepreneurship and the economic and social situation of different groups in the country who see in the bales the sustenance for their family and the dream of personal improvement.

For this exhibition, the artist recreates a “paca” from Mixco in the gallery, with the surprise that each garment is a full-scale acrylic painting on canvas. There are bedspreads, towels, pants, duvets, shirts, skirts, dresses and blouses. There are stylish new pieces and absurd ones that reflect the unique treasures of these businesses. The idea of ​​literally transferring the bale and not abstracting it to the white cube, frees it from being a “gentrified” appropriation, and is rather an attempt by the artist to share the daily life of his family and his community through his pictorial language.

We cannot talk about the “paca” without talking about economy and consumption. The clothing market in the United States has a value of more than 360 billion dollars and in parallel, 17 million tons of textile waste are generated per year in the same country. These figures tell us about consumerism and explain the exorbitant quantities of second-hand clothing that arrive in Latin American countries. Specifically, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC), the United States exports one billion dollars of used clothing per year and its main consumer is Guatemala, purchasing $193 million dollars annually. For Guatemalans this is a great source of income, and we see more and more how mega businesses such as “Megapaca Stores” and second-hand classified sales on social networks increase consumption among new sectors of the population. Shopping at these stores is no longer frowned upon, but has become part of our culture. This also speaks to the adoption, by powerful segments, of popular practices that buy American clothing out of necessity.

The truth is that buying in the “paca”, is a way to find unique pieces from different periods, to get brands that would not come to the country otherwise, to save money on the purchase of clothes and above all to stop the massive consumption of new clothes which entails a culture of exploitation of people and resources, and contributes to massive contamination that increasingly pollutes the world with textile waste.

“She abrió paca” is an opportunity to connect through art with a commercial practice that we all do without questioning its origins. It is a way of talking about diverse social realities that happen in the country. We talk about informal economies, waste reuse, fashion and means of survival for hundreds of families in Guatemala. We talk about migration and American dreams that force our contexts to adopt American fashions and dress in their “waste” while families look for opportunities to survive.

For the artist, the exhibition is a “Funeral Carnival”, a playful setting that invites us to form a community through its reality, at the same time as questioning the implications that the “pacas” have for the different scenarios of the country and how each one of us participates in these economies through fashion, environmental awareness and the living conditions of a country like Guatemala.

-Josseline Pinto, Curator

Photography: José Oquendo