It began as a feel-good story.
Someone Somewhere, a Mexican apparel company, posted online wondering why Mexico’s World Cup jerseys couldn’t be embroidered by some of the nation’s Indigenous artisans. It was an idea that could bridge Mexico’s past and present, the company argued, while lifting some of its most vulnerable out of poverty. The next day, Adidas called.
Last month, two years after that call, Adidas and Someone Somewhere unveiled versions of the Mexican national team jersey embroidered by hand by 150 Nahua women high in the mountains of central Mexico, in a tiny town called Naupan.
Adidas flew two of the artisans to Germany to induct the jerseys into a company archive. Someone Somewhere brought others onto the field for one of Mexico’s last friendly matches before the tournament starts this week. And the jerseys, despite costing more than $200, sold fast.
Then Mexican activists said the story had a much darker side.
“Finally, we know all the murky details behind the Adidas collaboration with the artisans of Naupan,” Luz Valdez, a Mexican activist and influencer, said in a video last month to her combined 1.3 million followers on TikTok and Instagram.
She accused the companies of exploiting the Nahua women while profiting off their image. The artisans were not even allowed to use their traditional sewing method, she said, instead learning more contemporary techniques.
One claim in particular took hold: The women were paid 36 pesos, or $2.06, an hour to embroider jerseys that cost as much as $285 each, she said, citing unnamed sources. That would be 9 percent below Mexico’s minimum wage. “I’m angry,” she said to the companies, “because you knew exactly what you were doing.”
Her videos rocketed across Mexico, racking up millions of views. News outlets covered the story. Politicians responded to it. And thousands of people left angry comments, some saying the companies were even more evil than they had thought.
But little had been said by the Nahua women. So we traveled into the mountains to speak with them ourselves.
Into the Workshop
We arrived on May 31 to a commotion in Naupan’s cultural center. Groups of Nahua women trudged up a hill in their traditional embroidered dresses, and a team of smartly dressed government types were getting out of an S.U.V.
More than a mile above sea level, this town of 2,000 Nahua people was suddenly at the center of a national controversy, and Marina Núñez Bespalova, a top cultural official from Mexico’s leftist government, had booked a last-minute trip to respond.
Speaking to dozens of Nahua women, Ms. Núñez Bespalova offered them free government training in textiles, as well as a workshop on how to eliminate intermediaries and sell directly to consumers.
“Multinational companies enrich themselves off the value you give to these pieces,” she said. “You yourselves are a value, and from that value, you don’t earn what you’re owed.”
When the event ended, many of the women headed off to get back to embroidering World Cup jerseys. We followed.
Despite countless articles in the Mexican press, the Nahua woman who answered the door of the one-room workshop told us we were the first journalists to visit. The artisans, she said, were eager to share their side of the story.
Inside, more than 25 women sat at seven tables sewing the classic Adidas stripes in the Mexican flag’s colors into the jerseys. They chatted in Nahuatl, an Indigenous language spoken by about 1.5 million people in Mexico.
I began asking questions, and they switched to Spanish. Then virtually all of them contradicted the national narrative.
“Honestly, this job is much better than anything else,” said Monica Marin, 45.
“We come the hours we want,” said Micaela Perez, 41. “I’m a widowed mother of two children. Thanks to this job, they see me.”
“What we earn is fair,” said Anabel Guzmán, 35. “If you could’ve seen where I was the day I started here,” she added. “I’ve been able to get ahead with my kids.”
The opinion in the room was unanimous: The compensation was just, the schedule was flexible, the location was convenient and, for now, the work was consistent.
Their complaint was that the gig would soon end with the World Cup. For many, that meant going back to tilling fields of beans, chiles and peanuts, which meant longer hours, less pay and more grueling work.
“If all those people making those comments took the time to come and talk to us, they’d realize we’re not being exploited,” said Betty Alonso, 28.
The women said they now feared the negative attention would scare away potential employers.
“I feel enormous anger toward all these influencers,” said Edith Carballo, 38, who joined the project after getting laid off at a pharmacy. “In their minds they’re helping us, supposedly. But they’re just helping themselves.”
Into the Numbers
Ms. Valdez, 28, has become one of Mexico’s most visible activists for her videos criticizing companies that she says exploit Mexican artisans and their culture.
One of her viral videos last year accused Adidas of ripping off the huarache, a type of Mexican footwear with pre-Columbian origins. The company later apologized.
Over the past several weeks, Ms. Valdez has been eviscerating Adidas and Someone Somewhere. In a series of videos, she said the women in Naupan received meager pay, had wages deducted for mistakes, were not given proper benefits and were forced to finish two jerseys every five hours. She also said the women lacked “ergonomic chairs,” “only had a one-hour lunch break” and “sometimes there wasn’t even toilet paper in the bathroom.”
She said her information came from unnamed artisans and former employees of Someone Somewhere who sent her messages.
Adidas said in a statement that it has worked with Someone Somewhere “to strengthen working conditions for participating artisans” in “adherence to our global standards.”
The two dozen women interviewed in Naupan all denied Ms. Valdez’s claims. (Though I did see one woman take a roll of toilet paper to the bathroom.)
They said they were paid more than 36 pesos an hour, but requested we don’t publish their specific wages because they worried it could make them targets for theft or harassment in their poor community. They also said it took about seven hours to embroider one jersey, but they could work at their own pace and received bonuses for finishing faster.
Antonio Nuño, chief executive of Someone Somewhere, also disputed the claims. He said that he shared the women’s fears about disclosing their specific wages. On the condition that we don’t publish detailed numbers, he showed me pay slips for nine women that showed they all received hourly rates higher than 36 pesos an hour. Most also received bonuses for efficiency, administrative tasks, training colleagues and working specific days.
The company legally treats the artisans as suppliers, not employees, which exempts it from providing certain benefits. One of the female leaders in the community said they negotiated the contract for the Adidas project, but did not consult a lawyer.
With the wages, bonuses and potential profit-sharing reflected in other documents he shared, the women would earn more than a living wage if they worked 40 hours a week, by standards calculated for similar rural areas in Mexico by the Anker Research Institute, which studies income benchmarks around the world.
Ms. Valdez was not convinced. In an interview, she discounted the women’s accounts, saying artisans like them are always scared to criticize employers. “Workers feeling fine about exploitative conditions — that happens all over the country. But that doesn’t make it any less exploitative,” she said.
The day after we left Naupan, several of the women posted a video on Instagram saying they loved their job.
Ms. Valdez responded with a new video accusing them of reading from a script from Someone Somewhere. “As Simone de Beauvoir would say,” she said, quoting the French philosopher, “the oppressor would not be so strong if he did not have accomplices among the oppressed.”
A Complicated Goal
Mr. Nuño, 34, the head of Someone Somewhere, said that growing up in Mexico, he and two friends first traveled to Naupan when they were 15, as missionaries. The trio then spent three summers there in college, studying how the local artisans work.
Now they run Someone Somewhere as a B Corp, a special certification for companies with environmental or social goals, which doesn’t carry tax benefits but is often used in marketing. In addition to making a profit, the company’s aim is to lift artisans out of poverty by bringing their work to market.
That has not proved simple. In Naupan, the traditional clothing requires highly intricate, highly time-consuming embroidery. A design that takes 15 days is priced locally at 1,500 pesos, or $86, if they sell it at all, the Nahua women said. That is far lower than wages on the Adidas project.
So Someone Somewhere made a deal. To reach a larger market, the company largely designs its own products it believes customers want — like T-shirts and sweatshirts — and then hires artisans to embroider them.
Activists say that treats the artisans as laborers producing Western designs, while still marketing the goods as Indigenous products to win customers and corporate partnerships, including with IKEA, Lacoste and Delta Air Lines.
Mr. Nuño said the approach was the best way to create stable work for the artisans.
Three former employees of Someone Somewhere, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said the company rarely substantially changes artisans’ lives, in part because the work is so inconsistent.
We viewed an internal company document that showed in 2024, the company paid 35 artisans in Naupan an average of about $2 an hour. At the time, that was about 15 percent higher than Mexico’s effective hourly minimum wage. But the artisans’ average income fluctuated wildly from month to month, from $35 to $350, because of the inconsistent work, according to the document.
Some artisans have also complained about the pay. One woman, who requested anonymity to preserve her job, said that she is paid $6 to $8 per T-shirt she embroiders. She said each shirt can take eight hours, resulting in a wage as low as 73 cents an hour.
Mr. Nuño said that women are paid for two to three hours per T-shirt because tests showed that was how long most women took.
Ms. Valdez said the lack of good work in Naupan does not justify low wages. The women’s pay should be based on their value to the project, she said. Adidas and Someone Somewhere have heavily featured the Nahua women in marketing materials, yet Mr. Nuño said they were not compensated for that.
Ms. Núñez Bespalova, the Mexican official who visited Naupan, agreed the artisans should better understand their value.
“But we also have to respect the decision-making of all artisanal communities. They’re not minors,” she added. “Sometimes we have to leave behind the paternalism we’re accustomed to, and trust that sometimes they make the best decision for their group.”
Chantal Flores contributed reporting.
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