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In December 2015 a group of eleven Indigenous women climbed one of the highest mountains of the Andes range in Bolivia. They had no mountain climbing experience; they worked as cooks at the base camp. They carried heavy equipment on their backs and crampons on their boots to scale the icy slope – and they did this wearing their traditional vestimenta, a long, multicolored skirt, blouse, and llama-wool shawl.
Their leader is Lidia Huyallos Estrada, an Aymaran who decided to challenge her society’s expectations of Indigenous women. The photo above shows the mountain with the city of La Paz, near where she grew up.
When I first heard this story, in May 2021, I was fascinated. I like to challenge myself, to push my perceived limits, but I could not imagine the distance these women went – literally, up that mountain, and figuratively, crushing stereotypes.
Recently the Duolingo Spanish podcast re-aired its 2021 interview with Lidia Huyallos Estrada. I took this as a sign that I needed to hear the story again.
By the way, when the women made their historic climb, Lidia was 50 years old.
Indigenous women of Bolivia, or cholitas, are known for their colorful and iconic clothing, which dates back to Spanish colonialism more than five centuries ago. For all those centuries and until recently, cholitas have suffered racial discrimination and marginalization. They have served as cooks and porters for the mountaineers who come from all over the world to Bolivia, to climb the highest elevations in South America.
When I think of this story in relation to the hiking trip I’m planning, my first thought is how very tame my adventure will be compared with what the cholitas did; and second, what a privileged place I’m coming from.
Nowadays, cholitas wear their vestimenta proudly, but growing up in the 1970s Lidia was not allowed to wear hers to school. That change has been influenced by Lidia herself.
Lidia awoke at midnight that summer day (in South America) in December 2015. She dressed in her vestimenta de la cholita, packed her bag, and started her trek up Huayna Potosí, the mountain she had seen in the distance all her life.
Since the early 1990s she had been working as a cook at the base camp, while her husband guided climbing expeditions. At that time, Indigenous men held climbing-related jobs, and cooking was the only option for a woman. But the political and social climate in Bolivia was changing, beginning with the election in 2005 of the first Indigenous president, Evo Morales. He supported Indigenous rights and appointed Indigenous women and men to his cabinet. The cholitas began to take pride in their name and their vestimenta.
A journalist who had met Lidia’s husband on Huayna Potosí challenged her to climb the mountain as a demonstration – literally – of the cholitas’ rise to dignity and power. So Lidia set out to convince ten other women to join her.
Whoa. Last year my Pure Barre studio had a Bingo challenge for a month, and one of the tasks on the card was to get a friend to take a free class. That square was the hardest for me to fill, much harder than squares that required me to take three 50-minute classes in a day.
Lidia had to get ten women – all with no experience and probably no interest – to climb a 19,974-foot peak, which is about as high as Alaska's Mount McKinley.
She did it. None of the women, including Lidia, had ever climbed or used climbing equipment. And because of the need to do the climb in the summer, there was no time for training or practice.
It took two days. On the first day the women made a short trek to the base camp, where they spent the night – part of it, anyway. They got up at midnight and began the climb to the summit, which would take about seven hours. When dawn finally arrived, it was a beautiful, sunny day.
Lidia, at 50, was the eldest of the women by a decade. The ascent was hard work, and after a few hours the women were tired and hot. They were proud to wear their traditional long skirts and colorful shawls, but at times their skirts would catch on the sharp metal blades of their crampons.
“No pude más! I couldn’t take it anymore!” Lidia exclaimed. She sat down, removed the crampons from her boots, and even took off her skirt and stuffed it into her bag. Then, it was the women climbing with her, who had been so hard to recruit, who reminded her of their mission and encouraged her to keep going.
As they climbed higher, the temperature dropped and the wind grew stronger. Lidia walked on, repeating to herself what might be the universal hiking mantra: “Un paso más, un paso más” – “One more step …”
Finally, after seven hours and 1,400 feet of elevation gain, they summited Huayna Potosí – the first cholitas ever to do so in their traditional dress. Of course, there was a huge celebration with triumphant yelling and hugging. Lidia said that she felt immensely happy in this achievement, but, more significantly, she felt free.
Having climbed to the top of that mountain, she knew that “podía hacer cualquier cosa.” – she could do anything.
Afterwards, Lidia and her compañeras started calling themselves the Cholita Climbers. In the years since, they’ve trekked to the highest peak in the Western Hemisphere, Mount Aconcagua in Argentina – and they’ve played soccer at high altitudes, wearing their vestimenta. Now they are preparing to open a school to teach women the skills of mountain climbing.
Stories like this – of women who have all sorts of reasons to believe they can’t do something, and then go and do it – their stories give me the courage to resist the drumbeat of negative voices inside my head:
You are not strong enough.
You’ve done hardly any hiking …
… and hardly any camping, …
… and you don’t even like camping.
You really don’t like the outdoors – the heat, sun, dirt, sweat, bugs, etc.
You’ve never learned to appreciate nature.
You are not strong enough.
Lidia Huyallos Estrada climbed the mountain that called her out of her limiting circumstances. I can borrow her courage and follow her example – un paso más – one step at a time.
Photo: Hiker descending Huayna Potosí
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