Being Irish has its pros and cons as a traveller. We are known abroad as wee Ireland- a country of beauty, people dancing on the spot, Guinness, sheep and all things green.
After many years of welcoming people to our country and answering questions such as “Why did they build the castle so close to the freeway?” we’ve grown accustomed to showcasing our heritage.
Although I tire of hearing “top of the morning to you”, it never fails to surprise me how many people embrace Irish culture. This curiosity in how others accept our identity is something I encountered recently in Bolivia.
In Peru I bargained myself a fabulously colourful pollera, a traditional skirt of the Aymara women of Bolivia and Peru. Delighted with my haggling capabilities, I returned to meet some friends who fell about laughing when I showed it to them.
“Never mind,” I said to myself, “it’s pretty, it’s cultural, I’m wearing it.”
The next day I skipped off to Bolivia all aglow with the excitement of experiencing a new culture. Evo Morales, new constitution, more rights for indigenous people, now that’s something I could TALK about! An early morning in La Paz, chomping at the bit to get out and run about the city, I donned my pollera.
Now as a blue-eyed blondie, I’ve gotten used to people passing comment on the street in South America. This however was something I couldn’t have been prepared for. All day there were car horns blowing, stares that lasted for blocks on end, waves and giggles.
In the markets women sang out, “Aye, mira la gringa en la pollera!” to the extent I thought it could be one of the few reggaeton songs I hadn’t heard. My brain pickled with questions I had to find out why there was such a reaction.
I asked a beaming lady in the market, why the fuss. “It’s my culture,” she said. “You are embracing my culture.” On hunt to find out more I understood better when I saw images of women wearing polleras being beaten and set alight on the covers of newspapers.
The pollera was imposed peasant dress during Spanish colonial rule. It has become a badge of the Aymara’s ethnic identity. In Bolivia today, a country struggling to reconcile it’s cultural diversity with a racist colonial past, the pollera symbolises pride in the Aymara’s ethnicity.
If you go to Bolivia and find yourself drawn in by the spectacular colours of the Aymara people, embrace it. You can be safe in the knowledge you will be greeted by most as a gringa in a pollera.