Who made her a narrator?
My grandfather used to tell us with his stories where we came from to know where we are going.
And who taught you how to knit?
Knitting is thinking. We think with the feel of our fingers, which tell stories with the threads. And the colors are the words with which the earth and its minerals speak to us to create those stories.
In what language are they narrated?
Quechua, Aymara, Uru, Guarani... We understand each other, because we understand the world in the same way: horizontal; because no one is more than anyone else, we all understand everyone. And so they share their root, which is common, like our whole world.
Are they educated 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 our own, which doesn't just speak for the eyes and 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 did not reach our America.
S’equivocaven?
Because they had not studied the archaeological remains of our communities, in which there is indeed blue, and we discovered this by tracing the oral tradition of our weavers and their wisdom about the dyes generated from plants and minerals.
In songs and stories?
Passed on by more than 900 collaborating weavers of our ethnographic museum: one of our stories explained that in order to be able to dye with a blue color, you must first give the fabric the green color of the tola (a medicinal plant) and then leave it in rest in clay.
Were the tales dye formulas?
And they also explained how to add the intense red of the cochineal to achieve the intense blue. Does it look like 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 they saw us as poor, ignorant people who needed to be educated in the vertical transmission of knowledge. Instead, we all learn as a team and horizontally.
But you have a degree in Art.
Yes, of course, at the National Academy of Fine Arts in La Paz; but when my brothers in the community wanted to learn with me, I suffered a shock, because baroque, rococo, neoclassical... What could interest them in all this?
And what interested them?
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 my own.
How much did you rewrite?
Three great compendiums over 20 years on "Women's Science"; "Textile structures and techniques of the Andes" and "The thought of color".
And do all communities accept them?
I am from the south of Oruro, Bolivia, Cacachaca, a territory in conflict with the neighbors over the land; it is known as a war zone.
I hope he has calmed down.
I grew up in the community, but also in the mix of my Aymara mother, of the mountains and their herds of flames; and my Quechua father, from the vegetable garden in the lowlands. I am the oldest of my siblings, so I had to learn to graze and farm.
And did you have time to study?
At school they wanted to replace that community education and whitewash 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 am explaining to you.
Do you systematize the millenary knowledge of oral tradition in textile science?
It is a millennial knowledge that has given us our philosophy, epistemology, theology... They look 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 are the values?
Mutual parenting, for example, is said in a similar way in both languages.
What do we lack in Western vertical authority universities?
Incorporate all the senses into the learning experience, which is human.
