Aldo Montaño
06/12/2020 - 22:00
- Clarín.com
- Society
My parents are Bolivians, more precisely from Laguna Carmen: a small peasant village located 50 kilometers east of Cochabamba. In Laguna Carmen the houses are made of clay - some like small mansions in the far west, others in the shape of an igloo - and people live on animal husbandry and cultivation. They had begun to see each other on the sly because their families were fighting: an old dispute over land had antagonized them and they did not speak to each other. My dad had graduated as a surveyor, a career he studied in the city after doing his military service, and my mom was a seamstress. Since nobody could see them together, when I appeared in the plans, and before the pregnancy was too noticeable, they decided to come to Argentina to look for a different future. They went out at dawn, as always, to cut alfalfa. They found themselves among the cornfields and left without saying anything to anyone, carrying some train tickets, some silver and a minimal bag.
I kept reading
Does prejudice attack the poor and the darker skinned?
Society
Whenever I speak about them there is a question that appears immediately, if I am Argentine or Bolivian, it is the first thing that people want to know. Since I was born in Buenos Aires, I am Argentine but also, of course, I have my Bolivian share. I carry it by lineage and also because my parents always kept their customs. At home, for example, they spent conversing in Quechua and only spoke Spanish when they had to do it with me. Sometimes my mom wanted to translate for me or make a summary of what I had talked to my dad so as not to leave me out and I would reply, "I know, I understood everything." I understand Quechua very well. I like to spy on Bolivian conversations on the street without them suspecting that I understand everything they say. Talking doesn't work, although the truth is that I never bothered to practice.
Memory. Mom, Dad, Aldo (standing on the right) and his little sister.
They arrived at the end of 1981. First we lived on Maciel Island and then we moved to Berazategui, just the same year that my sister was born. My dad started working in construction and my mom took care of me. It was when I made my first friends that I realized that in my house we handled different customs from the rest. In addition to what happened with the language, we did not know what mate was and instead we had api, a thick infusion of violet color, with a kind of giant fried cake of sweet dough that my mother called donuts. Then, she alternated traditional dishes such as peanut soup, spicy chicken or chuño with new ones: the puchero or milanesas with Russian salad. Many times she killed chickens to cook them. My friends asked me to see and they were fascinated watching how the cut throat of the down jacket - her neck like a cut cable, her head hanging - shook her last death rattles until she was lying in the patio.
The ones that came. Her parents at a party.
So many different customs began to settle the idea that we were different. At that time I was thinking about whether that was right or wrong but at school, when the prejudiced glances of the others came, that idea became thick. At school events some classmates elbowed me and told me that it was not my place to sing the hymn . As much as I had been born in Buenos Aires, for the neighborhood and for my colleagues, I was Bolivian. That's what they told me, enunciating nationality as if it were an insult.
Carmen Lagoon. The author in the Bolivian town of his family.
My whole subject with identity became more complicated when I saw that my uncles did not recognize me as their own countryman either. "It doesn't seem Bolivian," they said as if it were a strange compliment. They had a nickname for these cases: "50 cents" that's what they called the Argentine children of Bolivians for being "half Argentine, half Bolivian", playing with the reference to the currency of each country. That idea of being half and half, of not fully belonging, represented very well how I felt. I was conditioned by those two looks. Only today, when I think about this again, do I realize how bad the "50 cents" sounds; something that is worth nothing.
During the 90s a large Bolivian community was set up in Berazategui and Ezpeleta. Typical food houses were set up on Varela Avenue, soccer championships were set up on weekends, and the Saturday fair, the Tinkunaku -which in Quechua means "let's meet" - became a point of reference. My parents always took me, for them it was a way of reuniting with the llajta , as the land of origin is called in Quechua. The fair had a particular climate, you could smell the food, you could get indigenous products such as locoto and kirkiña, and also pirated cassettes and VHS with the latest Bolivian music. Walking through the fair was to meet countless relatives and acquaintances . She always asked me to buy “salteñas” empanadas: that's what they were told to some sweet dough stuffed with cubed potatoes and large pieces of chicken that sometimes included bone and skin.
At the fair the Bolivians took refuge out of affinity and nostalgia, but also because of the rejection they received on the street daily. Her skin color, indigenous features, gold teeth or simply her way of dressing or speaking evidenced her origin. It was common for them to tell them to return to their country or that if they sat in a bar, the waiter would not attend them directly. In my house they always talked about it during dinner.
In August, in Ezpeleta, the celebrations of the virgin of Copacabana were held. In one afternoon the Bolivians took over the street to celebrate and dance in colorful parades. Among the troupes were the morenada, the caporales, the tinkus, but my favorite was always the diabla with their soldiers in golden costumes, bears that looked like demonic ewoks, and the devils who shook their plaster heads while dancing on tiptoes.
Most of the other Bolivian children my age I knew did not come out of the community circle. They worked with their parents, listened to Bolivian music, and only went to civilian events. They seemed not to want, or not to need, to break tradition. On the other hand, it was difficult for me to understand how far I could, or wanted, to continue with these customs, mainly because almost everything that attracted me, such as music and cinema, came from elsewhere.
In 1994 the Bolivian team qualified for the United States World Cup and my home was a party. For the opening match against Germany my dad invited friends and relatives. They drank beer and when the team entered the court they stopped to sing the hymn excitedly, raising their hands to their chests as the television panned across the faces of their compatriots . For that World Cup I asked that they give me the Argentina team jersey. One afternoon, while I was walking down the street, a kid yelled at me that I couldn't use it because it was Bolivian. Not only did I keep using it, but little by little I bought the substitute shirt, shorts, jackets. I still do it, I like to wear the national team's clothes but sometimes I wonder if there is something unconscious, symbolic, in that impulse to dress as an Argentine.
Some years later I met Laguna Carmen. After almost four hours of flight we had to travel an hour more by taxi from the center of Cochabamba to the Valle Alto on a journey that slowly changed from the cement of the city to meadows full of cows and sheep. I had never been on a plane and the only reference I had about Laguna Carmen was the stories they had told me, so for me, who was a teenager at the time, it was like landing in a new world.
When I went out to explore I found the locals carrying alfalfa and grazing sheep in a landscape framed by hills and mountains. The men wore hats and dressed in sweaters, dress pants, and sandals made from tires called brogues . The women wore long braids and the colorful typical cholita dresses. I was wearing an adidas siren outfit while looking at me like an alien. We arrived just for the feast of the Virgen del Carmen, which takes place in July. When I got together with other boys my age, I was not surprised to find that for them I was a "gaucho" and that they were not necessarily enthusiastic about my presence.
After everything I went through in school in relation to the nationality of my parents, when I started high school I decided not to talk about them or about my trips to Bolivia to avoid situations that hurt me. I imagined rejection and did not want to repeat old wounds. I simply omitted the topic. As I did high school in Ezpeleta I had many colleagues who were also children of immigrants. At that time there was a, let's say, joke that said “What is the capital of Ezpeleta? Peace".
It was in those years that I first met some Bolivian children who integrated without problems . They did not need to hide information and defended themselves when necessary. There were some who had a punk band that I became friends with. We went out to see recitals with other boys without anybody's nationality having any relevance.
One of my favorite bands at the time was Jaime sin tierra . I once read that the name of the group was due to a particular situation of one of its members. He had been born in Switzerland, where nationality is not granted by birthplace but by that of the parents. So for Switzerland, he was Argentine and for Argentina, Swiss. That fact made me feel more identified with them, because for a long time, in my own way, I also felt landless.
During college I finished seeing that things could be different when I met a classmate who had been fascinated with Bolivia after touring it as a backpacker on his vacation. It was the first time that I felt that sharing my parents' story and talking about Laguna Carmen could bring me closer to people instead of excluding me. It was like a paradigm shift, I stopped feeling the need to hide things, I overcame some complexes, and, rather than feeling part of any nationality, I began to befriend the idea that I belonged to both. Over the years a need to compensate grabbed me and I spent showing my Bolivian lineage everything I could, that's why in my first profile picture on Facebook I have a Bolivian shirt on.
As a way of demonstrating their commitment to tradition, many Bolivian children prepare for a year to dance on the Feast of the Virgin. I know that I will never do such a thing, first because I am very bad at dancing but mainly because I think that I could rather get something more in line with what I know how to do, such as writing the history of my parents and Bolivian immigration, perhaps making a book .
Over the years, I traveled many more times to Laguna Carmen. The last one was with my wife, who is Argentine, and my son. Seeing my grandfather, the only one who is still alive, playing with my son was to close a personal circle. Sometimes, when I feel like connecting with Bolivia again, I return to the Ezpeleta fair in search of the empanadas from Salta. Those empanadas are my Proust cupcake , they take me back to the taste of my childhood. I also like to go with my family to the celebrations of the Bolivian community. I enjoy it, I love to see the groups and share that with them, but at the same time being there reminds me of my place in between. I see myself as part and at the same time foreign; And sometimes when I take a photo I can't help but feel a bit touristy.
----------
Aldo Montaño wrote in "La Agenda", "El Amante" and "Haciendo Cine". He likes to write about the things that interest him, although he finds it difficult to consider himself a journalist or a film critic. He was born in the La Boca neighborhood, grew up in Berazategui and currently lives in Parque Patricios. His life is a permanent transit between the suburbs and the city; he is attracted to both territories but he feels that he does not belong to either. He is an Independent fan, has a 7 year old son and works selling memorabilia online. His favorite book in history is "Retromania" by Simon Reynolds, a long essay on two of the themes that obsess him most: pop culture and addiction to the past.