My angle bob dream

Then, every Friday, I go back home! I am happy to go to the boarding school because even though I love potatoes, taking care of them makes my clothes and my hair dirty and it can get really hot. My dad says that I’m very lucky to go to school because he and my mum couldn’t.

Killa means “moon” in Quechua. Grandma says that it is a traditional name for little girls born in September. I think that it’s a bit ridiculous to have a name that means “moon”. On TV, people don’t have names like “moon,” “sun” or “tree”. I know it because my friend Liliana has a smartphone we use to watch shows, and people have great names like “Maria”, “Emily” or “Kate”. I love “Kate”. It’s so elegant and stylish. Fortunately, at school, no one speaks Quechua, so they don’t know my name means “moon”. At school, we must speak Spanish, and they teach us English. With Liliana, we study hard in English class, so that after school, we can have fun imitating the actors in our favourite shows. Sometimes, we even wear makeup to look like them. Liliana helps me put foundation on my face to make it lighter. Then we undo my braids and style my hair into a chic bun. Liliana says that with the bun, I look like Selena Gomez. It is not my favourite hairdo, though. Actually, when I’m an adult, I’ll get my hair cut into an angle bob. I would like to do it right now, but my mum won’t let me. She says that Grandma would have a heart attack if she saw me with short hair. She always says long hair are the antennas through which we can communicate with the ancestors, and the ancestors are sacred. I’m not sure if that’s even possible. Actually, I think Grandma is a bit waq’a sometimes.

Each year, my parents and I go to the big city to buy seeds and other stuffs, and those days are the best, because we go to Las Torres Mall, and you can find everything there. There are lots of beautiful clothes like the ones actresses wear in TV shows. And wonderful high-heeled and shiny purses. When I tell Mum that I’d love to wear shoes like that, she laughs. She says it’s impossible in our village because of the stones and the mud, no one can grow potatoes wearing those.

At the mall, there is a big screen that broadcasts music videos. The dancers and musicians are so beautiful and so chic, and I love the way they dance. In my village, people dance too, but I have never seen them up on a screen.  

Sometimes, in the city, there are gringos. Most of the time, they buy things at the mall, or they ride the ski lift called ropeways. How lucky they are! One time, I rode them with Mum because we had to go to the other side of town, and it was wonderful! The gringos take them all the time, and Dad says they don’t even need transportation; they just want to stare at the view and take pictures. It’s true they take pictures a lot! When we walk down the street with my parents, they’ll take pictures of us. Dad doesn’t like it, so he walks faster and gives them a mean look. Mum says they are amazed by our traditional clothes, as in their country, no one wears such clothes. I don’t really understand why our clothes seem amazing to them. Theirs are much better. I’d like to take a picture of them, but I don’t have a camera. One day, I too will go to the United States with a camera and take lots of pictures of them.”

On the big stage set in the town centre of La Paz, a 22-year-old woman folds her paper, puts it in her pocket, and pauses. She looks at the Quechua families passing by. She has deep black eyes. With her right hand, she tucks her long braids behind her ears. The wind makes her colourful shawl flutter slightly. She starts speaking.

“As you can probably guess, I wrote this as a child. I was fascinated by Western culture. I was just a child, and I thought, that I could be a part of it. All I needed to do was wear jeans and cut my hair into an angled bob. But soon enough, as I became a teenager, and this attraction I felt for a culture that was not mine fostered extreme shame for my own culture. I felt ashamed when I realised the tourists did not think our clothes were “amazing”, they thought we were “exotic” and our culture so “native” that they wanted to take pictures of us to show their friends how unusual their holidays had been. I started to see myself as an animal in a zoo, and just like my dad I walked faster. I started to think that I was living in a world which had not been designed for me, a world in which the Quechua had no place. And the more I felt that the world wasn’t accepting people like me, the more I tried to change, to erase everything that defined me. I tore at my own roots. When I reached high school, I chose a curriculum that wasn’t offered at nearby schools, so I would have an excuse to attend a boarding school in La Paz. I only came home during school breaks and stayed as far as possible from traditional clothes, songs and ceremonies, mud and potatoes. I wore jeans, fashionable clothes, purses, and even high-steeled shoes.

But the shame did not go away. I was ashamed because the angled bob I finally got looked strange on me. My “Indian face,” as many people call it, could never change, no matter the amount of foundation. But I still tried, as hard as I could. When I started looking for a student job, I applied to a waitress position at a restaurant. The owner gave me an embarrassed look and said, “I’m sorry but I don’t think you have the profile. No offense, but this is an upscale restaurant… I don’t want tourists to think I my waiters are comedores I hired at the market …”

At the end of the year, when I came home for the holidays, my grandma was seriously ill. She was lying in bed, and when I looked into her eyes, I felt a deep and painful shame. This woman had lived in a time when speaking Quechua was forbidden by law. I had the freedom to speak the language I wanted and to wear the clothes I wanted, and I chose to speak Spanish and to wear jeans. My grandma stared at me for a long time, as if she were trying to see through me. She observed my clothes, my makeup, my hair. Fortunately, she did not have a heart attack over my hair cut, as my mother had predicted years ago. “Dearest,” she said instead, “you have grown so much. You are a woman, now. I know that you don’t want to look like a Quechua anymore, and even if that makes me sad, I respect your choice. But… you must know that I’m old and ill. Soon, I will be joining the ancestors and returning to the earth that fed me my whole life. So, please, my little girl, I beg you, let your hair grow again, or I will never be able to talk to you again.” I thought my heart would stop. I broke down in tears, and I promised.

My grandmother died a few weeks later, and I spent the rest of the holidays harvesting potatoes with my parents and my brother. The next year, I was admitted to a university in New York, and I decided to wear traditional clothes on my first day. Of course, people stared, whispered, and I was almost expecting someone to take a picture. But I did it every day, and everyone got used to it. Even me.

And if I’m here today, standing on this stage and telling you my story, it’s because I want to talk about the power of representation. To tell you how difficult it can be for someone to belong to a world where they are invisible. How hard it is when one must choose between their identity and “normality”. To help you understand why it matters for a little girl to be able to see people looking like her on TV and social networks.”

A round of applause resonates in the street as Killa leaves the stage. She smiles. She is not ashamed anymore. She is proud to be herself in a world in which differences make people so uncomfortable. She is proud to be claiming the space that no one gave her.

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