Panchito‘s Diary

Context: I am already working on my Phd application. I will be working on the topic “patterns as a cultural identity” or something like that. I want to do my research text just as all my texts. Freely. I don’t want to use “high” language, fuck those fucking scientific snobs. My texts are also part of my arts, so I do them creatively and seek to form a connection between you and me. (blushes uwu)

So I am writing an excerpt, and this is part of it. Enjoy

–

I grew up in the Andes.

A place full of mountains, colours, traditions, festivals, arts and crafts, fruits, vegetables, racism, corruption, interventionism, poverty, post colonialism and a dying cultural identity.

I hate cheese, but we eat it, because there is milk, there is milk because there are cows, there are cows because we have a very large secure grass fields and cheap labor. We eat cheese because the descendants of conquistadores wanted some and slaved us to feed them some.

Now I hate cheese even more, its tart and acidic, has a chewy texture and doesn’t melt that good at all.

When the wind is strong, the legs shake and my crooked teeth tremble, I know its time to wear the Poncho of my grandma. Lovely strong woman that died when I was studying abroad.

I look at me wearing this poncho and feel warmth, fell hugged not only by my grandma, but by my ancestors, by llamas, by tall grass, by sad blue skies, by the place I was born and raised in.

Its just a white piece of llama (probably mixed) wool, that has been opened with a slit to get your head trough. But I notice that six strips have been woven on it, a blue color. With some negative space and some contrasting azure tones.

Where did this come from?

Who decided the color or the number of strips?

My grandma? The weaver? The Indigena? The Armored Monster? 

I grew up looking at very different kinds of Macanas, Ponchos, Chalinas, Sombreros, Fajas, Anacos, Mocasines, Alpargatas and other clothings. Are they just like the cheese? Made by colonialist order. 

Or were this ones actually a part of my heritage?

What do I talk about? 

My Family Name is Iturralde Ruiz, I have rapist, pillager and European ascendence. Even if I don’t like it.

Malcom X said it already, I have no Family Name, because it was erased from history, my father and his father, were given the name of the slaver. But I won’t take it.

Yes, Malcolm, neither do I. I hate cheese.

I love corn, potatoes, tomatoes, cassava yams, peanuts.

But German and Irish call themselves Potatoes too.

Italians brag about tomatoes and corn polenta.

And my African pals know how to enjoy some yams and peanut sauce.

This all came via the Americas, all of this food and species were pillaged. And helped with the evolution from feudalism to capitalism, From farmers to slaves to 8h workers.

Without potatoes, tomatoes and corn, Europe would have perished.

Without Yams and Peanuts, the African stolen people would have not been kidnaped, sold and enslaved. Because they wouldn’t have survived such a inhuman travel to the Americas.

Our crops fed the slavers and slaves.

But that was not enough. They wanted cheese.

So I woke up at 7 am, with the warm hand of my mom over my cheek, which is worn but still delicate. Under some wool blankets with tigers and bamboos. My dad leaves the house that was a “finca” some time ago, to go break his back to get some money for us to eat, even though we have enough coliflor and remolacha for the whole town.

I ride my cheap lent down bike for 20 minutes to the nearest grocery store, at the side of the “panamericana” the Indigenous road that united the pre colonial americas, that now resembles an “Autobahn” and is infested with cars and busses, that every so often leave families of indigenas or mestizos as roadkill.

I arrive at the shop where I ask for twelve wheat bread-rolls, 1L of milk and half piece of table cheese.

–

They took everything. They even took the gold off the bones of our ancestors.

They took our food, our diet, our way of living. Did they took out colors too?

I hope not. There is no blue like the one of the Andes Skies. There is no six water springs running down the dead snowed volcano.

There is no poncho like the one of my grandma. 

Nobody might steal out patterns! We are indeed people of color while the world goes blind.