A little girl does not just grow up with her parents. She grows up surrounded by aunts, uncles, cousins, and deeply involved godparents ( Respect for Elders: Girls are taught early on to use the formal instead of
Lesson One: You are a princess. You are the muñeca (doll) of the family. You must wear the ribbon in your hair. You must be educada (polite, well-mannered). You must smile. as a little girl growing up in colombia
The highlight of the year for any child is the holiday season, which starts on December 7th with El Día de las Velitas (The Day of the Little Candles). As a young girl, dressed in your best clothes, you join your family on the sidewalk to light dozens of colorful candles and paper lanterns, making wishes into the night sky. The entire month of December is a blur of novenas (nine days of prayer and song before Christmas), eating sweet natilla and fried buñuelos , and staying up until midnight waiting for El Niño Dios (Baby Jesus) to bring gifts. Navigating a Complex Reality A little girl does not just grow up with her parents
To grow up as a girl in Colombia is to be surrounded by a powerful matrix of women. While Colombian society historically carries a thread of machismo, the domestic and emotional heart of the home is fiercely matriarchal. Grandmothers (abuelas) are the revered pillars of the family, holding the secrets to both traditional recipes and ancestral remedies. You must wear the ribbon in your hair
Hair was a battleground. For those of us with the curly, frizzy pelo malo (bad hair), Sundays were a torture session of hot combs and aceite de coco (coconut oil) to straighten the mane. We wanted the sleek, swinging hair of the Brazilian soap operas. Our mothers, wiser, insisted on braids. "To keep you cool," they said. "To keep you safe," they meant.