Sasha F. - Okay, so start off with where is your family from?
Pejota - My family is from Esmeraldas, Ecuador. My mother is from the city area of Esmeraldas, which is close to a beach called Las Palmas. They call it El Centro because it's like the city. And my dad grew up more on the outskirts of Esmeraldas in a town called Quininde, which is also a part of Esmeraldas known for having the non-black people of the province because Esmeraldas is predominantly Black Afro-Latino.
Sasha F. - Okay, so this I already know, but you're from Elizabeth, New Jersey. How was it growing up Afro-Latino, Afro-Ecuadorian in that area?
Pejota - So, it's so funny. Growing up, I remember in elementary school, I always had like my good friends were always girls that look like me. Like we were all brown, we were all Black. I had a Dominican friend, a Puerto Rican friend. Yes, they were usually Dominican and Puerto Rican. But there was like an understanding that I was Afro-Ecuadorian. Like people saw my mother, saw me, never questioned what I was until I actually started going to school in another part of Elizabeth, which is uptown Elizabeth, where it's predominantly white Colombians, Portuguese people, Uruguayans, and everything else. I'm not going to say they're all white, but predominantly compared to what it's like growing up downtown Elizabeth, which I always have noticed that when Hurricane Sandy happened, we were the only part of town that had to evacuate. We're always getting the end of the stick with environmental racism. All the people who have lost their homes and have to move somewhere else because downtown Elizabeth is close to the mall and the airport and it's getting gentrified in its own way now are all African-American people. I would say that growing up Afro-Latino downtown Elizabeth, though, the Afro-Latinos that you saw were mostly the Dominicans or Puerto Ricans. So I wouldn't mind explaining to people why I'm brown and Ecuadorian because the only Ecuadorians in the school looked more indigenous than I do because I'm also not going to say that I look entirely Black. I'm notably a mixed girl. So yeah, whenever I went to school with my hair in a ponytail, they were like, okay, we see that you're Latina. When I had my hair down, they'd be like, but you don't look entirely Ecuadorian.
Sasha F. - There's something else in there.
Pejota - Yeah, and it's always been that way. I never really had an Ecuadorian best friend homie growing up because every single time I tried to relate and bond with Ecuadorian people in school or sports or anything, once I would tell them where I'm from, you see the change in their face. You see the change in their face. Like, okay, she's not that Ecuadorian. She's not like me.
Sasha F. - Your family is from a different part.
Pejota - Exactly, and it's that simple. And if only it could be accepted. But there's also a time when I was working at a wig shop on 14th Street in Manhattan called Wigs and Plus. One day at work, there were these two Ecuadorian ladies that walked in, and I knew they were Ecuadorian by the way that they were talking. And they were actually having a hard time trying to get something, so I approached them and I was helping them trying to get a hair straightener, of course. (Laughter) And so when I was bringing it down to them and giving it to them, I told them, oh, are you guys Ecuadorian? And I said this in Spanish. And they were like, sí, mijita, sí, somos Ecuatorianas. And then I'm like, oh, I'm Ecuadorian too, from Esmeraldas. And they literally called me a monkey. They were like, oh, pero eres mona. Because in Ecuador, people from the capital call people from the coast monkeys. And this does root from Black people living on the coast. And we have to be brutally honest where this comes from. And it's not okay. And that's why I always say that growing up in Elizabeth, the most racism I've been around has been around my own Ecuadorian people. And I feel like everybody wants to look like their beautiful mother, right? But I'm glad I look the way I do, because I'm always having to be that person to catch people off guard when they're saying some racist shit about Black people, period. That's why I was called woke in high school, just for defending half of who I am. Or girls would mock me, saying, oh, that's that Afro-Latina type shit. Because it was just starting to be a thing on the internet. But I knew I was Black my whole life. And everybody who grew up around me knew it, too. Like, my grandmother raised me, my mother raised me, my aunts raised me. So many people helped raise me, and they were all Black women. I don't even know my father's family, because they don't want to know us. Because it's that deep. Like, when my mother was pregnant with her first daughter, my father's sisters would, like, stalk her, try to throw shit at her. Like, really, like, horrific things that you read about in books and see in movies. But this is someone's life.
Sasha F. - Yeah, yeah.
Pejota - So, and then also, growing up, before my father moved out of the house, I always witnessed my father, to this day, he calls my mom negra. He doesn't call her by her name, nothing. He ain't never called her babe. Like, something out of real affection. He's always called her who she is, negra. So, and it would be really bad, because in front of other people, he would try to do it in an endearing way. But when I grew up around his domestic violence, and whenever he was hitting her, he was yelling at her that she was a negra. So, I get really, like, emotionally charged when we talk about these things, because I hate how non-Black Latinos try to downplay that racism in Latin America looks different.
Sasha F. - Like, in, like, honestly, it feels like Latin America, they try to pretend that racism doesn't exist. Racism is an American concept. And it's like, Anglo-Americans didn't invent racism. They have a different version than what Latin American has, but it's there. Because guess where the people who were enslaved from Africa ended up first? Latin America.
Pejota - Exactly.
Sasha F. - And the Caribbean. Okay, so on to our next question. We kind of touched this a little bit in your first answer, but I want to delve a little deeper. What does being Afro-Latino mean to you?
Pejota - I feel like first and foremost, I should say that being Afro-Latino is just a term to help other people understand me better when I say that I'm a Black woman. Because I know that even who gets to say who's Black, a lot of that is based on phenotype, experience. If you got blood or a body to match it, you know? I don't have the experience that even my mom went through, but I have my own experiences. And those experiences feed into what I feel my Blackness is. Because unfortunately, I only get reminded I'm Black whenever I just open up.
Sasha F. - Yeah.
Pejota - You know? I can't tell my story without being Black. Period. And I feel like being Afro-Latino literally just means you are a Black Latin American. Simple as that.
Sasha F. - Okay. So what is a way that you take up space in the Afro-Latino community?
Pejota - I kind of mentioned it in the first question.
Sasha F. - Yeah. We're just riffing off of...
Pejota - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I don't mind repeating it again. There's been many times in my life, like high school parties, when people really don't want to hear it because they're having their first drunk experience and I'm in their face telling them, you can't say the N-word. Oh, and that's another thing. So I'm not my mother's only daughter. There's three of us, three sisters. And it's funny because when I look at us, I always think we really look like the sum of colonization as three sisters because my oldest sister, she's the Black passing the most. My second sister came out like my dad. She's the only white one. And then there's me that I got my melanin because I'm Black, but I have my father's eyes. And you know when they be like, oh, the eyes don't lie and, you know? Yeah, so I'm more racially ambiguous than both of my sisters because my oldest sister can never also not say she's Black. And my second sister, she can never not say that she's not like half white because she looks white, you know? But getting to the point, I feel like even between my sisters, I have to show up and defend who we are because even the way how all of us act, it's really telling, like racially. Like whenever we get into a problem with my sister who's the fair-skinned one, she brings up things like, oh, y'all mad because y'all don't got hair like me. She's the one out of us that says the N-word the most, and she feels like she's okay to say that because she's Black. But I'll never forget, she's not visibly Black, and so she uses it more than anybody I know. And she's gotten into fights in high school about it, and that would be her argument, like, oh, my mom is Black, so I can say it. But the thing is, that's not her history.
Sasha F. - And it's the difference between having a Black parent or having Black family and actually being racialized as Black. Exactly. And I feel like some Latinos who are, you know, more fair-skinned, but their family and their parentage is not, forget that. Like, they just do, and they take it for granted that.
Pejota - And they try to victimize themselves.
Sasha F. - And they try to white woman tears through it.
Pejota - Yes, yes. Call it what it is, white woman tears moment. But, yeah, so I remember when my oldest sister started dating her husband, her now husband, who is an African-American man from Texas and Chicago, you know, like with deep roots in the Black Methodist South. So he really don't play about the N-word. When we first met him, I felt so uncomfortable. I felt bad for him because my sister was in the backseat saying N-word this, N-word that, and then he brings up the conversation like, you can't say that. And then she didn't let him win his argument, even though he was right. She really, like, stood down.
Sasha F. - Ten toes down.
Pejota - Ten toes down saying, but look at our mom, but look at this, but look at that. And, like, me and Jennifer, the ones who actually have melanin on our skin, are just like,
Sasha F. - Well, damn.
Pejota - Girl, I can't back you up there. I can't. And I'm not going to lie, because of my sister, I also used to say the N-word. But it was that experience in the car that taught me to, like, cut that shit out. And, yeah, growing up, not just downtown Elizabeth, but growing up in Elizabeth, New Jersey, too, that's that thing. Like, I remember my mom used to hate hearing people say the N-word, too. But I remember she really drew the line one day when a white Cuban friend of mine, mind you, in the moment, I had a white Puerto Rican friend in the room with me, a white Ecuadorian and whatever else she was, and a white Cuban girl, like I said. This was summertime. We just got back in the house. What is their favorite thing to do? Compare tans. Who's the darkest one? And my mom heard her say, oh, don't count Priscilla, because ella es la más prieta. Like, I'm the most prieta one in the room. And my mom came out the room, and she's like, what the fuck did you say to Priscilla? Because maybe in the Caribbean, people might use prieta like more endearing, but at least, like, in Ecuador and South America, that's like calling somebody the N-word, too. So I wish my sister was there in that moment to see that, like, it's not just the N-word in America. It's, like, you got to check yourself everywhere you go.
Sasha F. - Exactly. Okay, so we're getting to, you've already expressed how you feel about being Afro-Latino and how you take up space in the Afro-Latino community. Something that we always find as Afro-Latinos, this term that ni de aquí, ni de allá. And you've already kind of touched on this, but how do you navigate those dual identities?
Pejota - It's so funny, because when I'm in Ecuador, everybody makes it known that I'm not the Ecuadorian-born one of the family. Like, I'm the Yankee, because I'm the first American-born, period, in my family. But you know what? I feel like now I take it as a privilege that I'm able to give them a different perspective. Like, I don't mind being the American, if being the American gives me a little bit more resources to, you know, educate my family or love my family better or something. Yeah.
Sasha F. - Okay, so this question has come to be a little more broad.
Pejota - Oh, wait, I didn't touch about being, like... Sorry, I don't want to cut you off.
Sasha F. - Got you.
Pejota - Another thing, growing up in Elizabeth. Elizabeth is a place where, Elizabeth and North Jersey, is a place where a lot of undocumented people live. And Elizabeth is where the ICE headquarters in Jersey is. So growing up, we used to always normally have new students coming from really harsh situations. And it turned into a thing where, like, people would make fun of how the immigrants were dressing in school. And that's why later on, I think that's really the reason why the district instilled uniforms. But then that's a whole other segregation in the city type of thing that I got to talk about later. But yeah, I guess I just wanted to talk about that, like, in Elizabeth, growing up, at one point, people weren't... You just, people were being xenophobic against our own people, racist against our own people. And I'm not going to lie. I think I let that, my teenage years, even... Because they would call people who were, like, immigrants of anywhere in Latin America, and specifically Haiti, too, which is the most anti-Black one, they would call them mamis and papis. And that would be, like, a slur. Yeah. And that is the ni de aquí, ni de allá thing that I'm talking about, where I'm just like... I can't believe there was a period of my teenage years where I was ashamed to, like, listen to Spanish music because people were going to call me a mami. So... But... Sorry, I'm just thinking before I lose my train of thought completely. I think that's all I wanted to say. I might bring it up again later.
Sasha F. - You may come back to it.
Pejota - Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just so loaded, that question. I don't know where to start.
Sasha F. - Because the thing is, like, this interview is not meant to be... We're just doing 20 minutes. It just goes as long as we need it to go.
Pejota - Yeah. And I'm down for that. Thank you for holding this space.
Sasha F. - And then, so, our next question in here is, is there an Afro-Latino historical figure or significant person, dead or alive, that you would want to have dinner with and why? So, I'm going to emphasize on significant person. That can include people from your own family.
Pejota - Okay, that's such a hard question. Hold on. I know how I'm going to answer it. Let me just talk from straight from... I was going to look for my phone to give you, like, an exact biography. But let me just tell you how I know him. I don't know the whole history of how it happened. But I would love to have un encocado de pescado with Alonzo Illescas who was the leader of the Maroon community. Esmeraldas is a Maroon community, meaning it's a community made up of freed... Not freed. Escaped slaves. And basically, the man who led the movement and established Esmeraldas as a Maroon community was Alonzo Illescas. And if you ever have the chance in your life to visit Esmeraldas, if you enter through the main entrance of the town, you can't pass to the town without seeing a huge statue of Alonzo Illescas holding a ram of platanos and a machete in the other hand. And because I always see him as a statue, I always imagine that statue moving at night, like Night at the Museum type of thing. I wish he would just get off that pedestal and have a good meal with me one day. And I also think it's so interesting that he was originally enslaved in Cape Verde. Well, actually no, he was supposed to be enslaved in Panama, I think. But yeah, he was originally from Cape Verde. And I love that just knowing that gives a lot of information on where we come from in Africa in Esmeraldas. Like, we have Alonzo Illescas coming from Cape Verde, but Esmeraldas also has their own music called marimba that we share with the southern tip of Colombia as well. It's called marimba. And it's basically a xylophone. And the xylophone comes from Ghana. So it's like being in Esmeraldas is cool because you see that so many little things come from different parts of Africa. And we don't know if we come from one place or we come from many places in Africa. And it's beautiful either way.
Sasha F. - So at this dinner that you would have with Alonzo Illescas, what is like one question that you would love for him to like explore with you?
Pejota - I... hold on. I didn't expect that one. What would I ask him? I feel like I'd be in so much awe that I would just let him talk about whatever the hell he wants. But I would actually ask him, you know, how do you properly use a machete?
Sasha F. - Well, that's a good question.
Pejota - Because you know what? Esmeraldas is nothing but emeralds, caves of emeralds and jungle and trees. So I imagine my ancestors like with their machetes making their land, their civilization with machetes to the trees.
And I don't know. I wanted to get a machete tatted on me just because of that.
Sasha F. - Okay.
Pejota - So it's that deep for me.
Sasha F. - Got you, got you.
Okay. So moving on, like we know that your colonized language is Spanish. What is your relationship to Spanish?
Pejota - You know what? As much as, you know, other Ecuadorians are racist to Esmeraldaños, I love Ecuadorian Spanish because if you hear us talk, even the Black people in Ecuador, we call each other ñaño, ñaña. That means sister, brother in Kichwa/Quechua. And it's not just that. It's so many other things we say that's in Kichwa/Quechua. And I just think it's beautiful. It just shows our history and the way that we talk. Like my mom, whenever she was mad at my dad and he was outside to pick me up, she'd be like, your taita's outside. She wouldn't even say your dad's outside. She's like, your taita's outside. Taita means dad in Quechua. So as much as, you know, we get left out of mainstream Ecuadorian culture, I do appreciate the Quechua in our Spanish because also historically, the Indigenous and black people in Ecuador didn't have beef. Because, yeah, that's also, I mean, I don't know. I can't speak for everybody. But apparently when the enslaved not the freed, the escaped slaves landed in Esmeraldas, obviously there was people there already. And it was I forgot their Indigenous name. I think it's Carchi. But, yeah, they had open arms for them when that happened. And I think I don't have an Ecuadorian history book in front of me, but, you know, there was solidarity at one point with Indigenous and Black people in Ecuador. And I think it's beautiful. Oh, but you know what I don't like about Spanish? That every single time, like, don't ask me to speak Spanish right now to prove that I know the language. And I feel like that's something that Black Latinos face a lot. People are always like, okay, maybe you might expect Spanish to come out of my mouth. But when people see my mom speak Spanish, they're like, oh, my God. And she's like, girl, I speak more Spanish than you. But so there's that. And I feel like I have to mention that.
Sasha F. - Yeah, yeah. Because, honestly, I feel like every time you are Afro-descendent, Hispanic, Spanish speaker, like, either they don't assume you speak Spanish at all, or if you try, like, even if your Spanish is shaky and you're just trying, you get, like, pushback.
Pejota - Yeah, they really be like, oh, but you're not really, like, that brings us back to the ni de aquí, ni de allá, right? Like, unless you speak the language properly out the ass, you're going to be respected, you know?
Sasha F. - And even if you do manage to have a proper, like, what you say, you'll get some random Mexican person speaking back to you in broken English. Like, you didn't just speak to them in Spanish.
Pejota - Like, you know what I said? It's like, well, no.
Sasha F. - Like, I've gotten to the point now where I'm like, maybe if they're so intent on speaking to me in broken English, maybe I'll just speak English to them. Right, right. So, like, if you want to struggle, you can struggle.
Pejota - Exactly, exactly. Period.
Sasha F. - Okay, so this last question is more of, like, a reflection. It doesn't have to be. It's just how you feel at this moment. What is the legacy that you would like to leave?
Pejota - I would like to end this life knowing that I put some effort into putting my people on the map, more than they have been before I was born, at least. I'm not saying I'm the savior. But, you know, like, it is a big deal for me to step up and as an Afro-Ecuadorian person to talk about this in America because Ecuador itself is, like, 300 years behind still when it comes to Blackness and treating Black people properly as human beings and everything. You know, Ecuador was also one of the most peaceful countries in Latin America after Costa Rica, I think, a few years ago. But only in a few years it turned into the second epicenter of drug trafficking in Latin America after Mexico. And that's another thing, another loaded thing that's happening on our land, Esmeraldas, Ecuador, because it's on the border of Colombia. And also Guayaquil is bad, too, because it's on the southern tip to Peru. But really, it's mainly, it's always our land, our neighborhoods where people want to do their dirt. And then, unfortunately, the people who get hurt, killed, and summoned to do fucked up shit is also our people. Like, I got cousins missing right now because of this shit. And it breaks my heart. So I would like to, you know, just be one representative of many more Afro-Ecuadorians. Because I would want generations after me to know that there was somebody that did fight, you know, who didn't just let shit slide no more.
