As A Little Girl Growing Up In Colombia

As a little girl growing up in Colombia, my first lullabies weren’t soft. They were loud. Not violent—just vivo. The crack of a chiva bus backfiring on a cobblestone hill. The pock-pock-pock of my mother patting masa into arepas at 6 AM. The metallic cling of an aguardiente bottle cap hitting the floor during a parranda.

Silence was suspicious. Silence meant someone was sick, or the power was out, or—worst of all—that the coffee had run out.

On Saturdays, my abuela would turn on the radio to Caracol while she shelled habas (fava beans) into a chipped ceramic bowl. I would sit at her feet, my small fingers trying to mimic her speed, and listen to the vallenato accordion weep about lost loves and wayward mules. “This,” she’d say, tapping her temple, “is the map of our soul. Never forget the rhythm.” as a little girl growing up in colombia

I never did.

To grow up female in Colombia is to inherit a legacy of berraquera—a word that means toughness, gumption, and the refusal to quit. You look at your mother, who can cook a feast for twenty, negotiate prices with a truck driver, and do her makeup in a five-minute taxi ride. You look at the vendedoras ambulantes (street vendors) carrying fifty pounds of fruit on their heads, walking barefoot in the rain, laughing. As a little girl growing up in Colombia,

As a little girl growing up in Colombia, you internalize that you are made of the same stuff as the mountains (the Andes) and the same flow as the rivers (the Amazon). You are a product of mestizaje—the mixing of Indigenous endurance, Spanish structure, and African rhythm.

Colombia is a country of hyper-diverse geography, and as a little girl growing up in Colombia, your playground depended on which of the five regions you called home. you were hyper-aware of danger

As a little girl growing up in Colombia, you were hyper-aware of danger, but not in the way foreign news reported it. The danger was los vidrios rotos (broken glass on top of walls), the scorpion hiding in your shoe, or setting the arepa on fire because you looked away for one second. The violence of the 80s and 90s was a shadow in the adult conversations, a lowered voice at the dinner table, a reason you couldn't walk to the tienda alone after 6 PM. But for a child, day-to-day survival was about pragmatic bravery.