Last year a great friend who I consider a blood brother tattooed on my right forearm a Tumi knife belonging to the Lambayeque culture, a civilization that dominated much of Peru before the Incas. From there the idea to make a publication was born and in this opportunity I will make a second publication explaining a second tattoo in my left forearm where the same tattooist this time left forever in my skin a beautiful Aztec warrior.

I know that it did not resemble much to me in features to the South American aborigines but the reality is that my maternal and paternal grandmothers were aborigines, one from the Argentinean Patagonia and another from the south of Chile linked to the super living Mapuche ethnic group.

Hence the interest in telling my origins and how through tattooing I promote the aboriginal culture of my continent.

The criticism to the tattooing of this region is permeated by the influence of the media being the tattoos of Asian origin the most requested to the tattoo houses. In my particular case I preferred to recreate the ancestral culture of my origins through a tumi knife and an Aztec warrior.

The history of South America is marked by the greatest invasion and looting, destruction and murder in the world. The Spanish empire more than 5 centuries ago murdered more than 60 million aborigines. Existing cultures misinterpreted by historians often show these societies as weak and lacking in knowledge. What proves the same story if you are more objective in your research is that at least 90% of the crops consumed worldwide are a direct legacy of the Incas, Mayas and Aztecs. The buildings, architecture and ornamental designs in gold are an example that the most precious metal for the European culture and for which they organized supposed conquests for the aborigines meant something valuable but not to be a value but rather to worship the gods.

Personally I take culture very seriously and I am very sensitive when it comes to the past that has not ceased to have traces and wounds that have not finished healing, and if we add to this the imposition of the United States at the political level at least Venezuela has not ceased to be subject to processes of foreign ideology.

These are the reasons why I have marked on my skin my ancestral culture, showing the grandiosity of the designs that have nothing to envy to other cultures. Fortunately I have influenced other friends who have chosen this style that can become the reference of the tattoo on this side of the world.

After all, I was raised in a family that exalted the aboriginal culture and my behavior as an adult shows the positive impact left by the music, crafts, and aboriginal designs. Even my father, when he was a child, spoke to me in the Mapuche language, affectionately calling me weñe, which means "child" in Mapuche.

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Thanks for reading

Special recognition:

@r2cornell

@mariusfebruary

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