Mayra's essay

Stereotypes of Bolivia
Mayra Reynaga

When you mention Bolivia in other countries, they immediately relate you (a Bolivian) to indigenous people wearing traditional clothes without education and having fun all the time. I`ll show you with examples that Bolivia`s stereotypes are not right.

First, people think that all Bolivians are indigenous people. This is not totally true because even though we have indigenous ancestors and groups in Bolivia, they are not the only origins we have. In fact, there isn’t a 100% Bolivian indigenous people because de majority are mestizo. However, we still practice the indigenous traditions that are part of our life even though we have different life styles.

Second, all Bolivians always wear traditional clothes. Bolivia has a lot of cultures and everyone wears traditional clothes, but nowadays the majority of these cultures just wear these clothes for special days in order to give a sacred identity to this clothing, but we have an exception our famous “cholitas.” These women wear their traditional clothes every day because they are part of their life style and a symbol of culture and traditions. On the other hand, most Bolivians wear regular clothes like everyone else. In other words, we wear jeans, blouses, jackets, suits, etc, and we wear world fashions clothes too.

Finally, people say Bolivians love parties. On one hand Bolivia has a very rich culture and with this a lot of traditions and most of these traditions include a party like “prestes” or the Oruro`s Carnival so our parties are related to catholic religion that came with Spaniards. These parties have specific dates and not all Bolivians participate in them, so some parties are for certain groups or certain cities and these parties are just one day and in special cases like Oruro`s Carnival are three days.

In conclusion, all people have certain stereotypes about other people because of the information that we have about them, and the things that you mostly remember are the bad things. But we must remember that all people have good and special things and we have to try to see these and understand their life style.