Hello listeners. For this special season of the Duolingo Spanish podcast, we're revisiting

some of our favorite stories from indigenous communities across Latin America. Today we'll hear

an episode from May 2021, featuring an Aymaran woman who's reached new heights. We're headed

to Bolivia to meet Lydia Wailas Estrada.

Together with some friends, she decided to challenge society's expectations for indigenous women

like themselves. And be sure to stay tuned for a special update at the end of the story.

Now, on to the episode.

Just a heads up that our storyteller today is a native speaker of both Spanish and

Aymada, an indigenous language from the Andes. As a result, her Spanish pronunciation is

sometimes influenced by the

Aymara, like when she says, Ropa. It sounds like... Ropa.

On a warm summer's day in El Alto Bolivia, Lydia Wailia Sistrada hears her alarm go off at midnight.

It's time to get up.

She rolls out of bed and gets her attire, or vestimenta, ready.

I'm putting a fala large, with many colors,

that's just debajoed to my knees.

Then, me put a blusa of an algodon, and, on the cover with a mantle of a one color, made of a lana of alpaca or yama. For ultimate, me Pongue, the sombrero,

that we're called borsalino.

That is the vestimenta traditional

of the Cholita.

A Cholita is an indigenous woman from

Bolivia. Many Cholitas speak Aymara and Quechua,

...