Ángela Camacho, activist and artist: “There is no perfect way to be indigenous”

Ángela Camacho (Buenos Aires, 45 years old) has had a thousand lives since she emigrated to London two decades ago, or as she calls this city, “the belly of the beast”, but she has always visualized one goal: to become a “good ancestor.” An activist and artist, she advises and speaks at some of the most influential British cultural institutions such as the Southbank Center, Barbican and the Tate Modern, and defines herself as a witch, indigenous descendant, creative, “ancestor on the way” and community organizer. She also works as a domestic worker and caretaker of two children, from Monday to Friday and from eight to five, an activity that she does not want to abandon despite her increasingly frequent cultural collaborations because it provides her, she says, with economic freedom. . But in none of those areas does she accept losing her identity or her ancient knowledge: those of her indigenous grandmothers, two Bolivians from La Paz who after migrating to Buenos Aires continued speaking Quechua and Aymara, were guided by the agricultural calendar and They were dressed as cholas.

“Maintaining the legacy is a life's work,” he explains in an interview with EL PAÍS. “There is no perfect way to be indigenous, it is something that has taken me years to learn,” she reflects. “We are displaced, but we follow the practices of our ancestors… I am an extension of my territory, and I am not going to let them fragment me.” With her demands, this friendly woman is becoming a reference for the indigenous and Latin American migrant community in London. “They told me it was the face of ecofeminism, and I had to Google it,” she laughs cheekily.

Part of his latest work as an artist has recently been exhibited in the exhibition Against Apartheid, in Plymouth, southern England, an exhibition on how climate change will make life miserable for part of the world's population. Camacho's work is an archive made up of collages of indigenous American women that she has created with her mobile phone to make their lives known and that she has been publishing as an encyclopedia on-line on his Instagram account, @thebonitachola, with more than 30,000 followers. Its objective is to make the indigenous population visible to “tear down the information fences” that exist about them. “We are less than 5% of the world's population and we defend 80% of the world's biodiversity,” he says.

She herself claims to belong to the indigenous population, although from the gray asphalt of the diaspora, where it was not always easy for her. She arrived at the age of 23, as a student, to the United Kingdom, where she spent 10 years undocumented, especially because she could not bear the cost of a temporary visa that she had to renew every two years and that in her case amounted to about 3,000 euros. It is not something uncommon. A single mother, she remembers herself selling cakes with a cart in the Elephant and Castle shopping centre, painting faces, as a cleaner and, she tells it without taboos, also as a prostitute. It was precisely at that stage when she wove a network, she got her visa and she moved forward. “The community saved me. The whores saved me, and I'm proud to say it. My work is born from the roots of the community, grows and is nourished from that space. I always come back to that point,” she states.

There is no perfect way to be indigenous

Now try not to leave anyone out. She does it with intergenerational embroidery workshops so that the youngest people—many orphans of references—know their roots. Also with neighborhood networks in social centers, such as the multicultural neighborhood of Brixton, where issues that affect the Latin American community are discussed, from labor exploitation to how to qualify for funds to organize cultural events.

In the museums and cultural institutions with which it collaborates, its audience is different. “For a long time I refused to participate in these spaces, which are not made for—but about—bodies like mine,” she recalls. But now she believes they are essential to breaking out of Eurocentrism and starting uncomfortable conversations. For example, about feminism, a movement that she, she maintains, was not created for black bodies either. Or about the colonial legacy in homophobia. “Historically, we had five or six genders, double spirit… gender was conceived in a more spiritual way. When the settlers arrive, they bring homophobia with them,” explains Camacho, alluding to research that concludes that some indigenous peoples had more than two genders.

For Camacho, the key to healing from the harms of colonialism is to practice a “long memory.” On social networks he sends a reminder every October 31: “My culture is not your costume.” “For those who think about dressing up as Pocahontas, a Hawaiian, a chief… I would ask you to light a candle and reflect on those who are gone, for those who are not here and for everything they had to go through before us.” And he ends with an invitation: “Practice to be a better ancestor along the way.”

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