My Crown | Translation

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Translated by MC Editorial

[Daniel Alarcón]: This is Radio Ambulante. I’m Daniel Alarcón. 

Alanis Ruiz grew up hating her hair. 

[Alanis Ruiz]: I felt ugly. I was very ashamed, very ashamed because my hair was not straight.

[Daniel]: She inherited her Afro hair from her father. And it was never easy to comb it.

Her parents had been separated since 2002, when she was three years old. So when she stayed at her father’s house in Ponce, in southern Puerto Rico, he would fix her hair in a sort of controllable style, an easy hairstyle. 

[Alanis]: He would pull my hair into a knot. He would pull my hair really tight and put gel on it and make a little knot that turned down.

[Daniel]: She preferred this, which didn’t hurt as much as when she fell into her mother’s hands, in San Juan. 

[Alanis]: When I was with my mother, she would make a lot of little knots, and I would cry a lot. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all. She would put a lot of tension on my hair, so it felt like a facelift. 

[Daniel]: It had to be straight, and for that she used a lot of gel and spray. The hair was rendered stiff and immobile. The idea was to keep it under control.

[Alanis]: They never told me, “Let’s let your hair down…” or… and I never asked, either.

[Daniel]:  That’s how things were. 

But she dreamed of other hairstyles, of different hair—long and straight, like Disney princesses’. Or, closer to home, like most of her classmates at the private school she attended. She always compared herself to them and envied them. 

[Alanis]: The ones I looked at mostly were the ones with blond hair and the ones with straight hair. And then I was like, “Wow, I want to be like her. I want to be her friend.”

[Daniel]: But the reality was different. Her hair didn’t grow very long, just below her ears. It was coarse, thick, and voluminous. To Alanis, it was like a waterproof brown sponge.

That’s why she was so happy when, one day in 2007, at age eight, her mother suggested she go get her hair braided. 

[Alanis]: I thought, “How cool!” I was very excited. 

[Daniel]: The idea of a different hairstyle was very exciting.

[Alanis]: Someone came and did the braids, which were tight braids, cornrow style, and I remember she brought some beads to add color to the braids and I was like, “Wow, how cool;” and I chose the colors I wanted and it was something really nice for me. I really enjoyed it; I felt very pretty.

[Daniel]: For the first time, she liked what she saw when she looked in the mirror.

The next day, very proud of her new look, she went to school. It wasn’t long before she was called into the principal’s office.

[Alanis]: And I was very anxious and very scared because I didn’t know why they had summoned me. I hadn’t done anything wrong.

[Daniel]: Soon she realized that the problem was not her behavior. 

[Alanis]: They told me I couldn’t wear these braids, you know? They were not allowed at school. The school called my parents and they had to pick me up and then I had to undo my braids.

[Daniel]: All the excitement surrounding her hairstyle literally fell apart. But no one dared question it. If those were the rules, her parents agreed that they had to be followed.

But for Alanis, this act would mark a before and after. And not just for her, but for the history of Puerto Rico.

We’ll be back after a break.

We are back in Radio Ambulante. Desirée Yépez picks up the story.

[Desirée Yépez]: Alanis walked back home not understanding the reason behind the ban on wearing braids, but, although she felt frustrated, there was little she could do. She was only eight years old and had slowly begun to feel that there was something wrong with being a girl with Afro features. While her skin was a light tone, not everyone in her family looked like that.   

[Alanis]: There were always comments, like “The race needs to be improved.” There were times when my grandmother would comment that when she was growing up, she felt that others didn’t like her because she was Black or they didn’t like my grandfather because he was Black. 

[Desirée]: There was an internalized rejection in her family of anything related to those roots. And her hair, of course, was no exception. So much so, that her aunt told her that her own hair had been shaved when she was a child. Alanis didn’t go through that, but she was instilled with the need to modify it at any cost. In her case, the straightening began when she was about five years old.

[Alanis]: When I straightened my hair, everyone would comment on it when I came home; my grandmother said, “Oh, how pretty. She looks like a doll…” Or all these things that made me think, “When I have straight hair, everyone tells me that I look beautiful, that I look gorgeous.” But when I have curly hair, well, I don’t get the same compliments.

[Desirée]: That’s why she got used to hair salons, hairdryers, straighteners, and brushes to feel pretty. For her, her hair determined the way she experienced the world.

During one of her visits to the hair salon, an older woman told her something she would never forget and that she would repeat like a mantra: 

[Alanis]: She told me that to be beautiful you had to see stars. 

[Desirée]: Alanis understood what this expression meant shortly after the incident at school that began this story. No longer able to use braids, during one of her many visits to the hairdresser she was offered a new product to make her dream come true.

[Alanis]: I remember the girl telling me, “This is going to make your hair straight; your hair will never grow curly again. It will stay straight.” 

[Desirée]: She was so excited about the idea of finally transforming that bad, unruly, messy hair into something silkier, more delicate. She couldn’t wait to have it straight like the women in the TV commercials. 

[Alanis]: So they washed my hair, applied the product, which is like a cream with a very strong chemical smell, and it was very intense. And then they left the product in my hair for, I would say, 15 minutes. 

[Desirée]: And that’s when she started seeing stars.  

[Alanis]: It was burning. It felt very, very hot. After about 15 minutes, I was like, “lLook, now,… now it hurts, now it burns.” And the girl replied, “No, give it one more minute, give it a little more time.” 

[Desirée]: One of the signs that the product is working is the burning sensation on the scalp because, basically, what the chemicals do is break the hair strand.

Straightening hair is nothing new. It dates back to the beginning of the 20th century, when Black women in the United States were looking for work in factories or in white homes, and it became popular in the 1950s. But, despite time and advances in beauty products, the process is still painful.

So you had to put up with it. And Alanis did. Very obediently. Then came the cold water, which relieved the pain a little, and then the fantasy of a new head of hair. 

[Alanis]: And after that, I was like, “Wow. I mean, my hair was super shiny, super straight, and I’m never going to grow curly hair again,” and I felt very beautiful and I was happy.

[Desirée]: The suffering had been worth it. Her thick, uncontrollable hair had been transformed. And everyone was complimenting her. 

[Alanis]: Everyone said, “Wow, how pretty, how beautiful. Her hair is really shiny,” because it really looked very shiny. 

[Desirée]: Alanis continued using the relaxer for years, applying it every three months or so, but slowly she began to see the damage the chemicals were doing to her hair.

[Alanis]: My hair started to fall out. I didn’t feel confident about how I looked, how my hair looked, and it was really shocking when I couldn’t use the straightener, for example, and I saw that there was no curl left. My hair was dead; it didn’t look good.

[Desirée]: The magic had lost its charm. Since her hair was so damaged, she couldn’t straighten it, either, so naturally the curls started to sprout. And she had no choice but to accept them. However, social media played in her favor. 

[Alanis]: I saw that other people were wearing their hair natural. Particularly on social media, there was a trend of a lot of people wearing their curly Afro hair, and I saw that and I was like, “Wow, look! It looks super beautiful,” and… And I remember that I had my hair like that before. I don’t know what it looks like anymore. I don’t know what my hair would be like if I had it like that.

[Desirée]: It was 2015 and she was 16 years old when she decided that she would not undergo straightening treatments anymore, and as her natural hair gradually grew out, a revolution was happening in her head. It was not easy, because at first she was shocked by that new image. It was not what she was used to since childhood. And the growing-out process was hard. She had to control two types of hair: the remnants of straight hair that went from the middle to the end… And the curls that were starting to grow at the roots. 

[Alanis]: It was a very emotional process. I felt a lot of things, but I couldn’t believe that that was my hair, and I was doing it sort of to see the curls. 

[Desirée]: She would stand in front of the mirror, hold a lock of hair and stretch it to see how the new hair was growing. It was like getting to know herself again.

[Desirée]: Although Alanis Ruiz was born with curls, she had never learned to live with them, much less to love them. She had to learn to love them when she was practically an adult. 

[Alanis]: The first thing I did was look for videos on YouTube. What products should I use? How should I handle it? I went to the Afro curly hair salons, where I learned a little more about the steps, the products.

During that search, one day at the end of 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, a social media call came up on the algorithm. It was a free program called Afrojuventudes. This was promoted by two organizations recognized for their anti-racist activism in Puerto Rico. They wanted to train young people in politics and artivism—using art to make an impact—with a focus on Afro-descent and ancestry. At that point, Alanis was a Political Science student in college, majoring in gender, and she was 21 years old…

[Alanis]: I had never had the opportunity to be in a space with young Blacks and Afro-descendants, and this seemed extremely important to me because I was beginning to have a lot of questions and concerns, and I wanted to know more about my Afro-descendant background. 

[Desirée]: In her family, Blackness was not a topic that was talked about, but it was causing growing doubts in Alanis. And one of the main questions she had was about the history of her hair. She knew it was inherited from her paternal grandfather and her maternal grandmother, both Black; but she felt that a space like this could help her reflect on her own past—that past that she knew little about.

So she applied to the program and there she met more than 50 young people of African descent. They met every Saturday, virtually, and one of the first things she discovered was that, when it came to hair, she was not alone… 

[Alanis]: And I realized that it wasn’t just my experience, or it wasn’t my insecurity, but that there was a racial component to all of this; and other young people, and other people, had also gone through these processes. And I realized that it is a wound we carried.

[Desirée]: A wound because in that first conversation she learned about experiences that were as traumatic as, or even more traumatic than her own. She heard cases of young people who were also forbidden from wearing braids or their natural hair at school, people who experienced workplace harassment, and women who described straightening their hair as a violent act.

The Afrojuventudes hair workshop was called Altar de Altares. This is how Sacha Antonetty, one of the organizers of the program, explained it to me:

[Sacha Antonetty]: The history of our hair is addressed, but our heads are also viewed and understood as sacred.

[Desirée]: Sacred because one of the characteristics of slavery was to remove the hair of enslaved people in order to identify them and to remove their humanity. For this reason, the workshop, more than a lecture, was like a journey inward, towards the very origin of history. 

[Sacha]: The history of our hair did not begin with slavery, as many people think, but quite the opposite. It comes from many, many years ago. Centuries, generations ago. And often hairstyles, particularly in Africa, as well as turbans or even accessories, had a meaning to represent which family, which tribe, which social class you were from.

[Desirée]: The presence of Black people in Puerto Rico dates back to the 16th century, when hundreds of kidnapped Africans were taken to the island to be enslaved. Here, as in the rest of the continent, one of the most lasting impacts of slavery is the rejection of Blackness. And there is a curious fact that says a lot: in the 18th century, the kingdom of Spain enacted a policy allowing people of African descent who had a mixed racial heritage to pay a fee to be reclassified as white. In Puerto Rico, many did so.

And this social whitening has been a constant on the island. Almost 30 years after the abolition of slavery, once under the rule of the United States, in the 1899 census nearly 62% of the population identified as white. By the year 2000, this figure had reached 80%. The increase in that percentage has caught the attention of academics and no doubt responds in part to that need of individuals to feel accepted. 

[Sacha]: Yes, we must recognize that this process of the colonization, the exploitation, of our bodies, of human trafficking, of slavery, what it mainly did was to dehumanize us. And this dehumanization, presenting us as bodies, eh… wild beings, the closest thing to animals, had a direct impact on our beauty, saying and representing and making us think that we are ugly. Right? That we had no humanity or beauty in us.

[Desirée]: And in the middle of these conversations, Alanis found the piece she was unknowingly looking for to complete this puzzle:

[Alanis]: They talked to us about the Crown Act, which is a public policy in the United States, and this whole issue regarding hair. 

[Desirée]: The Crown Act, which stands for “Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair,” is a law that was passed in 2019 in California. It seeks to protect Black people from any form of discrimination based on their hairstyle.

Part of the process of enacting this law included a survey where, of the women who participated, more than half believed that they should straighten their hair to be successful in a job interview. Almost all of them had used straighteners at least once in their lives. And many said that, because of their hairstyle, they were sent home from work. Knowing all this inspired Alanis.

[Alanis]: And that stuck with me. It seemed like it would be a good thing if we had something like that here in Puerto Rico.

[Desirée]: A law so that no more girls or boys would have to suffer the violence that she and many other people suffered. 

[Daniel]: We’ll be back after a break. 

[Daniel]: We’re back with Radio Ambulante. Desirée Yépez picks up the story.

[Desirée]: In 2021, a few months after starting the Afrojuventudes workshop, things started to fall into place. Alanis found a call for an internship in the House of Representatives to develop a bill. Although she had no idea what the process for drafting and passing legislation was like, she was encouraged to apply. What she did know is that it wouldn’t be easy.

[Alanis]: I figured, “Well, I’m going to try to submit the Crown Act here,” and that’s where it all started. But I also knew that the processes here in Puerto Rico are very complicated, but I thought, “If it doesn’t get done, at least I tried.” 

[Desirée]: Once accepted into the internship, she had only one month to get her proposal off the ground. Fortunately, she was not alone. This was the result of the conversations and collective work that had begun in the Afrojuventudes workshops. And in fact, the organizations that promoted the anti-racist school supported her in this research.

In the process, she confirmed what she already suspected from her experience: in Puerto Rico there were private schools with regulations that prohibited wearing hair in certain ways. The texts said things like—and I quote— “ethnic haircuts will not be allowed. Braids may not be worn, and hair volume may not be longer than one inch.”

She investigated further, and with each discovery, everything became more shocking. She learned, for example, that the use of straighteners is related to the appearance of certain types of cancer. 

[Alanis]: I was shocked when I saw that. And here we are, every year, doing these straightening treatments without knowing that it had those consequences.

[Desirée]: Recently, a study by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in the United States revealed that people who used chemical hair straighteners frequently, most of them Black women, were more likely to develop uterine cancer compared to those who did not use them. This is also associated with the early onset of menstruation and reproductive health problems, such as fibromas, premature births, infertility, and breast and ovarian cancers.

Alanis, for example, was diagnosed with endometriosis at the age of 21 and, although it is not known whether her hair straightening is related, she feels that that possibility cannot be ruled out.

All this served as a driving force for her to become fully immersed in the text of the bill. It was ready by July 2021; but once in the hands of the House of Representatives, it stalled. 

[Alanis]: I was in college. And I was always looking for a chance to talk about the project. I mentioned it to people, but I had also lost some hope that it would ever be approved. 

[Desirée]: Time went by and no one took it into account. Two years went by, until Alanis was active again in 2023. She applied to a program to design an educational campaign to promote the law and looked for an Afro-descendant senator who works on issues of racism, xenophobia, gender and LGBTIQ+ populations. This is the senator, Ana Irma Rivera Lassén:

[Ana Irma Rivera Lassén]: The poor girl was very disappointed. But when I spoke to her at the office, I thought the project was a very good one and that all efforts should be made to carry it out, especially since I had been reading a lot about the Crown Act.

[Desirée]: Puerto Rico, as a US territory, has the same government structure as the United States. There is a Senate, a House of Representatives, and the governor’s office. Let us remember that Alanis initially presented the project in the House of Representatives, where it did not pass. But with Ana Irma in the Senate leading the discussion on the project, the process would start again. 

[Ana Irma]: I thought it was perfect for what I had been doing with these issues, and we started working on it in my office in the Senate. In the introduction, we talked about what discrimination is. How do we know what it is like in Puerto Rico? Specifically, what are the laws in Puerto Rico that needed to be amended.

[Desirée]: The new text included historical context, explaining how hair was used as a symbol and expression of culture in Africa. For example, dreadlocks already existed in ancient Egypt… Or how, for enslaved people, hair meant sustenance, because they hid seeds in their braids.

[Alanis]: Enslaved people even used cornrows to create maps and escape.

[Desirée]: Cornrows are braids that are close to the head, like the ones Alanis had when she was a child. The document also spoke about the constitutional context of Puerto Rico, where racism still makes itself felt, despite the fact that slavery was officially abolished in 1873 and more than 17 percent of the population identifies as Afro-descendant.

[Ana Irma]: To understand how discrimination based on hairstyles works, it goes hand in hand with the way racism occurs in Puerto Rico. Skin tones are the strongest way racism manifests itself in Puerto Rico. That means that you can have people with different skin tones in the same family, and some identify as white people if their skin tone is lighter. And others identify as Black people in the same family. The same thing happens with hairstyles and hair textures.

[Desirée]: The purpose of the law is to demonstrate that convincing people they look better when they deviate from their natural appearance is a form of violence. To clarify further: the collective idea that looking less Black or Afro is more desirable is an expression of violence.

[Ana Irma]: In today’s world, it’s difficult to accept that young people are still experiencing trauma due to racism. One might think that by this point in the century, we would have overcome such issues, which perhaps many years ago we thought we wouldn’t have to face in this day and age. However, racism is still there; it is alive.

[Desirée]: When the document was ready, a public hearing was called, where representatives from different sectors of society would share their experiences. The call took Alanis by surprise.

[Alanis]: I think I found out about four days before, I think. It was very, very quick. I didn’t know, and I wasn’t really sure who was going to attend. And I also had very little time to write down what I was going to say. It was very hectic.

[Desirée]: It was on January 23, 2024. 

[Alanis]: I woke up very anxious. I remember feeling somewhat sick. But I told myself, “No, I’m going to go anyway; I have to be there.”

[Desirée]: When Alanis arrived, she found the Senate chamber full.

[Archive Soundbite]

The Senate Human Rights and Labor Affairs Committee begins its work. Today, Tuesday, January 23, 2024, at 10:28 in the morning. I give you my deepest and Blackest thanks.

[Desirée]: At the back of the room, the senators—three women and two men—sat in their cubicles. In front of them was a wooden table with space for three speakers who would take turns. Ana Irma was in the middle, leading the session. And in the back, attendees occupied dozens of chairs. The meeting started in the morning. Ana Irma was the first to speak.

[Archive Soundbite]

[Ana Irma]: This Commission is pleased to address Senate Bill 1282 at the request of Miss Alanis Ruiz Guevara.

[Alanis]: Even though I was nervous and shaking, and felt that my heart was in my throat, I thought, “I have to do it. I’m already here.”

[Desirée]: She had reviewed the text she had written, gathered her courage, stood in front of the microphone, and introduced herself:

[Archive soundbite]

[Alanis]: I am a young Afro-descendant university student and activist. 

[Desirée]: She started by talking about how racist and violent these regulations are:

[Archive Soundbite]

[Alanis]: Discrimination against Afro hair and protective hairstyles is not personal, but systematic.

[Desirée]: She stressed that it is not just a matter of aesthetics:

[Archive Soundbite]

[Alanis]: This is a public health issue, where, because of these regulations, Black and Afro-descendant people resort to straightening their hair.

[Desirée]: And she ended by saying that the law is a guarantee of the human dignity that Black and Afro-descendant people in Puerto Rico deserve.

Then several more people came up and shared their stories. One woman told how, with the excuse of her hair, she had been discriminated against when trying to get a job: 

[Archive Soundbite]

[Julia]: “You are qualified to work here, but you must cut your hair. We do not accept curls, braids, turbans, and certainly not dreadlocks.” 

[Desirée]: There were mothers who spoke for their sons… Because this is not something that affects only women. Black men also face prejudice and discrimination because of their physical appearance.

This woman’s sons were forced to cut their afros in order to enter school. This directly affected their behavior:

[Archive Soundbite]

[Lorena]: My son Gianfranco began to exhibit signs of rebellion and shame. He wore a hooded coat every day to hide his face because he was embarrassed about how he felt he had to present himself. He was frequently sad, confrontational, and repressed. What might seem like a simple haircut to others felt to him like a violation of his right to be himself—a forced abandonment of his identity and his race.

[Desirée]: The pain was a shared experience. So much so that one of the senators dared to give his testimony:

[Archive Soundbite]

[Senator]: I have been discriminated against for that reason. I was the target of a pastor who simply said that I was filthy and that she was going to wash my hair because of my lack of hygiene. The first advice I got in 2016, when I was elected, was that I had to clean up and cut my hair and comb it like a child. In reality, I relate more to that bench today than to this one.

[Desirée]: It was more than three hours of shared trauma. In addition to being a kind of collective catharsis, it served to broaden the issue and bring it to the public opinion.

Senator Ana Irma, as one of the faces of the proposal, experienced the impact this national discussion had:

[Ana Irma]: In some places I visited, people approached me to share their stories of suffering simply because they had been pressured to change their hairstyle.

[Desirée]: Suddenly, it felt as though a massive pain had been uncovered. 

[Daniel]: We’ll be back after a break.

[BREAK]

[Daniel]: We’re back in Radio Ambulante. Desirée continues the story.

[Desirée]: Not everyone supported the bill. There were some who thought it was unnecessary. 

[Ana Irma]: For example, someone from the Department ogf Human Resources in Puerto Rico said that it was not necessary to approve the bill because that was already prohibited because it was a variant of race-based discrimination. Even the Department of Education said the same thing, that they understood it to be covered by existing prohibitions. 

[Desirée]: According to these arguments, since the Constitution of Puerto Rico already prohibits racism, the project was absurd. But Alanis’s goal was for the law to serve as a defense of those who feel vulnerable for having tight curls, dreadlocks, braids, knots, and afros. 

In April, with fifteen votes in favor, the Senate finally approved the bill. And although this was very good news, it was only the first battle of the war they wanted to win. Now the bill would go to the House of Representatives, the same one where it had not passed that first time in 2021. Let us remember that in Puerto Rico, if the Senate approves a bill, then it must be voted on in the House of Representatives (and vice versa). And since the 2024 elections were approaching, they rushed it.

Alanis’s collective joined other organizations and created strategies to ensure that the issue would not be lost in the whirlwind of an election year. This effort gave rise to the initiative “My hair is my crown.” Sacha, who had been one of Alanis’s key allies in the past, would also join this cause.

[Sacha]: For us, recognizing our African hair and hairstyles means understanding that we carry our crown on our heads. Anyone who seeks to influence that essentially attempts to take that crown from us, and there is going to be a process of affirmation and resistance.

This message was conveyed through a campaign that brought together nearly 30 organizations and hundreds of people. They put out calls on social media, designed filters, and created t-shirts with the slogan “My hair is my crown,” along with informational content about the value of Afro aesthetics. However, they knew they couldn’t just keep this to the digital realm. They needed to take their message to the streets. In mid-May, dozens of people gathered outside the Capitol in San Juan to demand that the project be discussed and approved. The demonstration was peaceful and, as Sacha recalls, it featured slogans, music, and a strong sense of community:

[Archive soundbite]

[Sacha]: Estudiar…  Yo merezco trabajar mi cabello es mi corona. Racista entiende ya, te quitan a ti la trenza, me quitan a mi los locks. Tu reglamento está al garete y al racismo decimos no… Te quitan a ti las trenzas. Me quitan a mi los locks.

[Study… I deserve to work. My hair is my crown. You racist, understand now, they take away your braids, they take away my locks. Your rules are adrift and we say no to racism… They take away your braids. They take away my locks.]

[Sacha]: We literally ran a beauty salon, a barbershop outside the Capitol building. And there was music, and art. There were children, there were adults. In one afternoon we were able to suddenly unleash our beauty. We had hairdressers in the space; we had barbers in the space.

[Desirée]: It had been months of intense work, in which they went to the representatives’ offices and delivered information. Until June 25, when everything was activated.

[Archive Soundbite]

[Spokesman]: The House of Representatives is now back in session. Good afternoon, fellow legislators, staff of the House of Representatives, and all those who may be watching and listening in. 

[Desirée]: That day, her project and others were expected to be discussed. Alanis was there from the start of the session. Everything was moving slowly and it was very hot… When it was almost seven in the evening, her proposal had not yet been discussed. So Alanis decided to follow the debate on social media from home. Finally, she noticed that her turn had come. She was anxious.

[Archive Soundbite]

[Spokesman]: Voting opens at 8:15 – 30 minutes.

[Desirée]: The projects and the votes they were receiving appeared on the screen. After that half hour, there among the pile of projects was Alanis’s, gaining support.

[Alanis]: I was talking to my mother at the same time; she was also watching to see how the votes would come in. We were just waiting.

[Desirée]: And suddenly…

[Archive Soundbite]

[Spokesman]: The final vote closes at 8:57 p.m. As a result of the vote, all measures have been approved.

[Desirée]: They had won. 

While her mother shouted with excitement, Alanis was in shock.

[Alanis]: I really couldn’t believe it. I felt all this energy. Excitement and happiness. This whole journey was amazing and I really couldn’t believe it.

[Desirée]: It only needed the signature of the governor of Puerto Rico, who had already announced that if it reached his hands, he would sign it.

And he did.

On July 25, the governor announced that he approved what was called the “Law Against Discrimination Based on Hairstyles.” A statement was published, clarifying that with this new law, protections for people with curly hair and Afro-descendant styles are expanded, prohibiting any form of discrimination.

[Alanis]: When he signed it, we were celebrating, I mean, shouting, crying; there was a lot of emotion and… And I really still can’t believe it. 

[Desirée]: Senator Ana Irma felt it was a great victory. 

[Ana Irma]: I knew that it was not easy everywhere in the United States, and the fact that we could approve it in Puerto Rico seemed even better to me. In fact, I understand that we are also one of the few jurisdictions that has managed to approve it. And in that sense, we also made history in the jurisdiction of the United States and in Latin America and the Caribbean.

[Desirée]: Alanis understands that a law is not enough to repair the violence that is already so internalized. I do too. And I include myself because my story is not very different from hers. At least, when it comes to looking in the mirror and not accepting what you see. My hair is also very curly. But unlike Alanis, I have not yet made peace with it. I almost never dare wear it loose, and I am 35 years old. When I look through photo albums, I see that I have been wearing a knot since kindergarten. I was never allowed to wear my hair loose because I was told it made my head look big. Someone even remarked that I resembled Krusty the Clown, from The Simpsons. Even now, my mother says that when my hair is loose, it resembles the mane of The Lion King. At the hairdresser’s, they also recommend that I learn how to manage my hair so it doesn’t look frizzy. All those comments echo in my head whenever I consider trying a different hairstyle.

My curly hair is a reflection of my African descent; it is typical of the people from Esmeraldas on the north coast of Ecuador. Paradoxically, my mother studied hairstyling, but back in the 90s, she wasn’t taught how to care for curly hair—only how to straighten it. So she advised me to straighten mine as well, but I never liked that idea. To this day, my mother continues to straighten her hair because she still doesn’t feel comfortable with her natural hair. She has been straightening it since she was about 15 years old, and she told me that when she was younger, she and her friends used an acid intended for unclogging drains, mixed with toothpaste. I find it hard to believe they used something so dangerous on their hair, but another hairdresser confirmed this. I know it is true because the history of hair straightening is part of the pain that Black communities have historically endured.

While producing this episode, I’ve come to realize how absurd it may seem to think about how hair affects one’s life. However, it has undeniably been a decisive factor for me. So I asked Alanis what advice she would offer to that little girl who looked in the mirror and disliked what she saw.

[Alanis]: I would tell her that she is beautiful. That she is gorgeous, that her hair is beautiful, that it tells the story of her ancestors and that it is something very special. I would tell her that having her curly Afro hair, having her braids, is something magical and powerful, and that in the very near future she will be able to love her hair in its entirety, that she will be able to wear her braids and that she will feel beautiful even if she doesn’t feel that way right now.

[Desirée]: I must confess that I envy her journey. There is an open wound inside me that I am even ashamed of acknowledging. But my hope is that one day—sooner rather than later—I will achieve it. I am taking small steps, like letting it out in the places where I feel safe. I hope that I, too, can proudly shout that my hair is my crown, a crown that does not weigh me down.

[Daniel]: In 2024, Puerto Rico joined the more than 20 U.S. territories that have passed a law against hair-based discrimination.

Desirée Yépez is a producer at Radio Ambulante and lives in California. This story was edited by Camila Segura, Luis Fernando Vargas, and me. Bruno Scelza did the fact-checking. Sound design and music are by Ana Tuirán.

The rest of the Radio Ambulante team includes Paola Alean, Lisette Arévalo, Pablo Argüelles, Andrés Azpiri, Adriana Bernal, Aneris Casassus, Diego Corzo, Emilia Erbetta, Rémy Lozano, Selene Mazón, Juan David Naranjo, Melisa Rabanales, Natalia Ramírez, Barbara Sawhill, David Trujillo, and Elsa Liliana Ulloa.

Carolina Guerrero is the CEO. 

Radio Ambulante is a podcast by Radio Ambulante Estudios, produced and mixed on the Hindenburg PRO program.

If you enjoyed this episode and want us to continue doing independent journalism about Latin America, support us through Deambulantes, our membership program. Visit radioambulante.org/donar and help us continue narrating the region.

Radio Ambulante tells the stories of Latin America. I’m Daniel Alarcón. Thanks for listening.