Who made you a storyteller?
My grandfather explained to us with his stories where we came from so we knew where we were going.
And who taught you how to knit?
Knitting is thinking. We think with the tips of our fingers, we tell stories with threads. And the colors are the words with which the earth and its minerals speak to us to create those stories.
What language do they tell them in?
Quechua, Aymara, Uru, Guaraní... We understand each other, because we understand the world in the same way: horizontal; because no one is more than anyone, we all understand everyone. And so they share their root, which is common, like everything of ours.
Do you educate yourself together too?
The classroom, when a teacher only gives orders without learning with his students, becomes a cage. We learn communally, horizontally, freely... Without orders.
Without discipline can there be education?
We have ours, which does not speak only for the eyes and the letters. We learn with all our senses: we go barefoot and our feet take notes from the earth.
What notes do you remember taking?
The academics said that we did not have blue in the communities, because it came from Asia and it did not reach our America.
Were they wrong?
Because they had not studied the archaeological remains of our communities, where there is blue, and we discovered it by tracing the oral tradition of our weavers and their wisdom about dyes generated from plants and minerals.
In songs and stories?
Transmitted by more than 900 collaborating weavers of our ethnographic museum: one of our stories explained that in order to dye with a blue color, you must first give the fabric the green color of the tola (a medicinal plant) and then let it rest in clay. .
Were the stories dye formulas?
And they also explained how to add the intense red of the cochineal to achieve the intense blue. Do you see how we already had blue in the communities?
It was a matter of listening to them.
But they didn't listen to us, because at the university we were poor ignorant people who had to be educated in the verticality of the transmission of knowledge. On the other hand, we learn as a team horizontally and with each other.
But you have a degree in Art.
Yes, of course, at the National Academy of Fine Arts in La Paz; But when my brothers from the community wanted to learn with me, I suffered a shock, because baroque, rococo, neoclassical... What could interest them about all that?
And what interested you?
I had to rewrite what was written about the cultures of our communities from the paternalistic and vertical perspective of Western academics in order to share it with mine.
How much did you rewrite?
Three great compendiums over 20 years on “Women's Science”; “Structures and textile techniques of the Andes” and “The thought of color.”
And do all communities accept them?
I am from the south of Oruro, Bolivia, Cacachaca, and it is a territory in conflict with neighbors over land; It is known as a war zone.
I hope you are pacified.
I grew up in the community, but also in the mix of my Aymara mother, of the mountains and her herds of llamas; and my Quechua father, from the garden in the lowlands. I am the eldest of my brothers, so I had to learn to shepherd and farm.
And did you have time to study?
At school they wanted to replace that community education and whiten me; But when I left university I couldn't find a job and I went into crisis. And I asked myself many questions, which have brought me here and what I tell you.
Do you systematize the ancient knowledge of oral tradition in textile science?
It is an ancient knowledge that has given us our philosophy, epistemology, theology... They seem like stories, but if you know how to listen to them you will see that they are much more.
Does a Quechua understand Aymara?
They are two different languages, but with deep connections, because we share community values.
What values are they?
Mutual parenting, for example, is called in similar ways in those languages.
What are we missing in Western vertical authority universities?
Incorporate all the senses into the learning experience, which is the human experience.
