The cumbias we heard up there

This is a project that began as a documentary but has gradually become personal. It tells the story of Deysi, a 36-year-old Aymara woman who represents the intersection of the Western world and the Andean worldview of indigenous Latin American peoples.

"I met Deysi in September.
That day I drove in my small rental car for hours lost in the highlands. I felt deep happiness, then anxiety, fear, optimism, and resignation. I went through all the mental states until it began to get dark, and I was overcome with terror: I had been lost for so long in a maze of paths that it was impossible to even think of going back. Finding Deysi became my only option. Tired and trying not to despair, I retraced my steps once more, towards the last detour I had taken. In the distance, almost imperceptible on a hill, I saw a white dot that looked like a jeep to me. The white dot was getting closer as I approached it. We met in a dry riverbed. "Deysi!" We hugged each other for several minutes, on the verge of tears, and I told her "I'm Fernanda, I've been looking for you for a long time."

This ongoing project seeks to show a new vision of what being indigenous in Chile means. Deysi is a 36 years old aymara woman who lives in between Alto Hospicio, a lower-middle-class neighborhood and her family field, located in a mining zone 5000 mt above sea level. She is the only one who still goes there, some times with Mirta, her mother, where she raises her llamas and alpacas to produce wool and meat.

When I visit her, we stay there for a couple of nights. We watch the small river freeze at dusk and come back to life with the sunrise. We sit by the fire, open a can of beer, and talk about everything, while cumbias and rancheras play on her phone. She tells me about her life, her dreams, and the difficulties of people who, like her, seek to live in a different way. She told me something that stuck with me: that in real life, there are no blacks or whites, but an infinite spectrum of grays where we all blend together.

This project is an inner journey trough another person, and raises an open question to us all: How to undertake the search for things that, in a certain way, have to do with displacing the frontiers of one's own being into unknown territories, with becoming another person?