British | Bolivian
I am Bolivian & British. My mother is Bolivian, from Tarija, but I have family in La Paz, Sucre and Santa Cruz. My dad is from Coventry in the UK. I was born in Coventry and then moved to Bolivia for 4 years. I started school with no English and no one understood me. Making friends was hard because they couldn’t communicate with me, and I tried to fit in a lot. I was aware mum was different to dad and subsequently the people around me. No one else in my community looked like her. I remember asking her why my skin was a different colour when I was small. I became obsessed with all things Bolivian. I also remember loving the food and drink, and clothing of Latin America. They were colourful, and looked ancient and new at the same time. The food was spicy and aromatic. I work in an industry where what you look like is a commodity. I think there is something inherently dangerous in mixed-race people getting labelled with being more White, therefore more ‘desirable’ in some way. I often feel less authentic to other Latina women, because I am mixed. I have come to realise, that I am always trying to work out my identity, because so many stereotypes exist, I am always trying to work out who I am against other people’s rules. For me there is a tension between the dominant culture (the one I live in), and the other. Watching my mother deal with racism has been the single most important dynamic in my life. I saw it when I was little. I saw her being told off for touching fruit on a market stall, being made to feel like her hands were dirty somehow. She has taught me a great deal about resistance, who is allowed to resist, and how society is complicit in perpetuating systems of oppression. I get angry when people don’t see their privilege. But being mixed has also meant I have access to two different cultures, two different ways of seeing the world. It’s made me interested in people, in their stories, and I try not to make assumptions based on what a person looks like. If I had the opportunity to be reborn I would stay the same. Ten years ago I might have said, make me fully Bolivian! Now, I am coming to terms with who I am.
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