How a Bolivian construction worker became an online star from her Va. garage

This ‘cholita’ is trying to preserve Indigenous Quechua language and culture, one live stream at a time

By Teo Armus
February 23, 2023 at 9:00 a.m. EST

Before she can begin filming her online radio show, María Luz Coca Luján must first transform herself into “K’ancha,” a digital persona dressed like the Indigenous “cholitas” of her native Bolivia.

So on one recent afternoon, she hustled back home to swap out her construction attire for that traditional outfit — a colorful, billowing skirt, dangling gold jewelry, a bowler hat atop her neatly braided hair — and then started live-streaming.

“Muy buenas tardes, aquí vamos de nuevo,” she told the viewers, at first just a few dozen of them, watching her in her garage in the nondescript D.C. suburbs. “Good afternoon, here we go again!”

Soon there were hundreds tuned in — from Madrid, Chile, New York — as the 32-year-old launched into a chatty monologue that rapidly became a vocabulary lesson in Quechua, the Indigenous South American language she has been battling to keep alive.

“Tell me all the words that you all use to convey anger,” she told them. “Let’s build our dictionary in Quechua, yeah?”

. . .



More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/02/23/cholita-northern-virginia-bolivia-immigrants/

Or:
https://archive.ph/H8JeC