Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum unveiled a new credit program for Indigenous female artisans during an official visit to Mexico’s Pacific Guerrero state on Sunday, calling it “ApoyArte.”
The program’s name combines the words to help (apoyar) and art (arte) and aims to promote the skills of Mexico’s Indigenous women by offering them interest-free loans of up to 30,000 pesos (US $1,608) with extended repayment terms.
“Being the first (female president) forces me to look at all the people, but especially at the women of our country: rural women, working women, young women, older women, but above all, it forces me to look at Indigenous women, those who for centuries were the most invisible, the most excluded, and the most forgotten,” Sheinbaum said during Sunday’s presentation.
The program, operated by Financiera del Bienestar (Finabien), will help artisans cover the textile costs required to develop their businesses, seeking to strengthen the financial autonomy of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican women across Mexico.
During the tour, Sheinbaum and Guerrero’s Governor Evelyn Salgado met with women artisans from the Amuzgo community in the Xochistlahuaca municipality who continue to use the backstrap loom, an ancient textile-making technique that the government seeks to preserve.
As part of the program, Mexico’s National Fund for the Promotion of Handicrafts (Fonart) will provide financial advice to the beneficiaries, as well as guarantee the sale of huipiles and other garments made by participating artisans at a fair price.
To date, 11,000 loan applications have been received, with approvals delivered to almost 6,000 women, supported by 170 million pesos (US $9.1 million) in funding.
The goal is to distribute 500 million pesos ($26.8 million) to 17,000 producers from various regions of the country this year, particularly in the Costa Chica municipalities of Guerrero and Oaxaca, where Indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities are concentrated.
Sheinbaum’s government designated 2025 as the Year of the Indigenous Woman.
Mexico recently ranked alongside Brazil in the top 15 countries for entrepreneurialism, according to a study from the digital financial services provider Remitly.
The study showed that while Mexico has a high entrepreneurial spirit, there is a significant lack of new business creation, largely due to funding restrictions and a lack of business acumen, a gap that programs such as ApoyArte seek to fill.
With reports from Instituto Mexicano de la Radio Noticias, Infobae, El Financiero and El Economista
