Our Black Heroine's Homecoming

Mariana Radisic • December 2, 2021

It was 5.30pm, the print shop was about to close, and our files were in the wrong format. While Analía -known as Afro Ana, a 30 year old digital artist- cursed, I sprinted towards my apartment to get a laptop to hopefully fix the issue. In less than 24hs, on November 20th, the day of Black Awareness on Argentine Black History Month, those files would be turned into the first ever mural about Revolutionary Black Heroine María Remedios del Valle, an obscured character with a Netflix-binging story.

Storytelling is our weapon

I had first heard of María only years before, at a talk on intersectional feminism. I could not believe that such a powerful character had been completely erased from our textbooks: an enslaved woman sent to fight for the Independence of Argentina along her family, who lost everything and everyone but became so focused, so resilient, so feisty, she’d end up becoming a Captain with the nickname of “the Mother of the Nation”. But as it often happens with Black Excellence, María’s bravery had been all but erased and she had spent her final years begging in the streets of San Telmo, just steps away from the place where two hundred years later, I’d end up founding a travel agency with a mission to shed light on the untold stories of Buenos Aires.

This mission of mine had led me to work with many groups whose stories had been buried, and in November 2020, with face masks, social distancing and a raging pandemic, our storytelling magic beat the odds: Julia Cohen Ribeiro, -an Afro Argentine activist, tour guide and artist with both Brazilian and Jewish roots- took a group of people through San Telmo in the first Afro Argentine History Tour.

ARTIVISM is our tool

Flash forward to November 2021, Black Pride Month in Argentina. We had survived the pandemic, and our tour was finally starting to take off. Black activism had turned María into an emerging force to question and enlarge the idea of what our country is. But she was still largely an echo, and I felt she needed an embodiment. A place where people could stand in front of her name, and learn her story. A place to show her our neighborhood hasn’t forgotten her, a place for tour guides, Black Activists and the world to give passionate speeches about her life and her doings.

I put Ana in a tight spot: we settled on the project and developed the whole thing in only 8 days. In any other context, we’d both be freaking out. But for some reason, we were instead entirely trusting of the project’s outcome: it would work out. And as we were at the print shop, with the wrong file format, fighting to print them at the last minute, Ana told me: “this thing we are doing would make our ancestors proud. They are the ones who will help us see it through”. And even though we don’t share our ancestry, I knew exactly what she meant because in a sense, I heard María’s voice calling me too.

Working with Ana is a joy. She’s brilliant, talented and authentic. Just by looking at her work, you can tell it's hers, speaking volumes about her African and Indigenous roots and telling a story of pride, empowerment and excellence. We had already worked together on an animated project to promote our Afro Argentine tour and I knew anything she’d propose would be amazing and embedded with her unique point of view. So when I asked her to ditch her computer and work on her first mural, it came as no surprise that she’d tell me: “I want to portray María in a different way. I don’t want to give her a sword and a military uniform. I’m sick of that. I want to imagine María as a child in an afro-utopía. What if things had been different?” “I have no idea how that’d look” I replied “but I can’t wait to see it”. And she set off to work.

It's all about community

You never know whether it’s fate, destiny, serendipity or just sheer chance, but sometimes things align in the most spectacular fashion. Only about two weeks before we settled on doing the mural that’d show María as a child, I was droning in San Telmo and met Fátima and her histrionic and energetic daughter, Madeleine Nkonda. As children usually are, she was fascinated with the drone, we started talking, and I suddenly made two new friends.

When I told Fati and Made about the project, they told me they wanted to participate in whatever way we needed. And so, planets aligned and we found our María.

This project really took the phrase “it takes a village” to the next level. Ana brought Sole Gabriela Velázquez, AKA La Negra Chimba, an experienced plastic artist and muralist, to help her translate her digital design onto the walls of San Telmo. Salvina Chunco, the owner of Sach, a boutique art gallery in Balcarce and Estados Unidos, gave us a wall from her shop to make this piece in the most trusting way, since she OKeyed the project without even seeing a sketch. Throughout the day, there were moments where we thought we wouldn’t finish. And every time that doubt arose, neighbors, friends and community showed up, helping with everything from putting together the collage, to bringing food, drinks and encouragement to the artists.

San Telmo has an undeniable magic and power: the power of our community. As the sun was hitting hard on this warm spring day, I called up Beto from El Gauchito to bring over some empanadas for our famished artists. Made, our young María, was hanging around when she saw him, he came over with a docena: her face lit up and she ran to him, and both merged together in an embrace. Little did I know, Beto had been in Made’s life since she was no more than an embryo, and he had been there for her mom through her challenging pregnancy, just as he had helped me stay focused and in tune with my inner self as my life fell apart during the pandemic. Beto is one of my favorite people on Earth and seeing his joy witnessing our project lit my heart.

Welcome home, María

It was well past nightfall when María came to life in the mural. Ana was right: it had all come together, and it felt like some otherworldly power had helped us through. As we stared at the mural, and it stared back at us, we were all overcome with so much emotion: María was finally home. Now, every person who walked in front of her would be able to scan a QR code to bring them to a hub to learn about María’s History, to discover Afro Argentine art and to keep on revisiting and challenging the story that we were told as kids. History belongs to those who were shunned from it, and one mural, one tour and one story at a time we are claiming it back.

Thank you, María Remedios del Valle for your bravery, your resilience and your power: it will never again be forgotten in the streets of San Telmo.

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