Sharoll Sinani Studio

Sharoll Fernandez Siñani: You've
reached the Sharoll Sinani Studio.

I am Sharoll Fernandez Sinani.

Keeper of the Heart Portal where poetry,
pulses, ancestors, whisper and though

dialogue alchemizes into luminous love.

Take a breath step through.

Let's create.

Imagine a city at Twilight
High in the Andes.

Smoke drifts through the streets
and a crowd gathers around a

makeshift shrine of candles.

A grandmother stands at the edge of
the crowd chewing coca leaves slowly,

deliberately in her wrinkle hand.

She holds a small bundle of herbs.

Her eyes glisten with tears
as she whispers a prayer in a

language that few around her.

Understand a language taught
to her by their grandmother.

This place is Senkata,
and tonight it mourns.

The air is heavy with two
things, grief for lives lost.

And determination to remember.

But what does it mean to remember,
especially when voices and even

language have been banished or silenced?

In this episode, we journey into a
recent tragedy in Bolivia, the Senkata

Massacre, and explore how memory and
listening become acts of resilience.

We'll hear poetry born from this pain,
delve into the history that led to

it, and discover a simple practice to
carry these lessons into our own lives.

Stay with me.

By the end, you'll feel the
pulses of ancestors in your ears.

And hopefully understand the power of
remembering even the hardest truths.

Let's ground ourselves
in a piece of poetry.

This is an excerpt from my
poem To Senkata and to my Dead.

I invite you to listen with your heart.

I come with my little things to heal you.

She sent me my grandmother with herbs,
with coca leaves and with her commandment.

You are going to chew with
your saliva and with force.

You are going to rub her with
her fingers outlining my neck

like this, like this, like this.

Saying She has taught me and
here I am, she heals our dead.

She feeds them and listens.

She listens to them, and since she
cannot come with the dead, she has

stayed, but she has taught me to me.

That excerpt holds so much.

I wrote those lines to capture a scene
of ancestral caregiving, a grandmother

sending her granddaughter in the spirit,
me with cocoa leaves and knowledge

to heal and listen to the dead.

Its imagery deeply rooted
in Andan tradition.

Let's unpack it and the history
surrounding Senkata, so the full

weight of this moment becomes clear.

First, you heard coca leaves mentioned
for anyone unfamiliar coca leaves are not

the same as the drug cocaine in the Andes.

Chewing Coca Leaves is an
ancient sacred practice.

People chew coca to a stay off hunger
and fatigue to cope with the thin

air of the high mountains and as a
form of communion with the earth.

It's done daily by millions from
farmers to city dwellers without harm.

Much like Americans sipping coffee, but
with a deeper cultural resonance for

some coca is even considered a gift from
Hamama Mother Earth In our poem, excerpt.

The grandmother's commandment to
chew is part of a healing ritual.

She's saying, use our traditional
knowledge, the way we practice

medicine, our ways to tend to the pain.

Now, why would the dead
need healing or listening?

Here we step into history.

The word Senkata now embodies one
of Bolivia's most painful memories.

On November 19th, 2019, in the Senkata
area of Alto Bolivian, security

forces opened fire on protestors
in a highly indigenous area.

By the end of the day, 11 people laid
dead and dozens more were wounded.

It was a massacre.

To understand how we got
there, we need to remember what

happened in the weeks before.

Rewind to October, 2019.

Bolivia held a national election
President Evo Morales, the country's

first indigenous president.

Was running for an
unprecedented fourth term.

Tensions were sky high
when the votes came in.

Allegations of fraud erupted.

International observers from the OAS.

The organization of American
States reported irregularities,

opposition protestors.

Many from the urban middle
class, took the streets accusing

morales of stealing the election.

The country was on edge.

Within days, the crisis escalated.

Police units mutinied, refusing to
quell the protests, then the military.

A powerful force in Bolivia's history.

Quote unquote, suggested morales resign.

Imagine the pressure the
army, publicly urging, the

sitting president to step down.

And on November 10th, 2019, Evo
Morales did resign unled into exile

for his supporters, largely indigenous
farmers, miners, and coco leaf growers.

This felt like a Coup d'état, a forcible
removal of the leader they elected.

Two days later, an opposition
senator named Janine Añez took the

stage in a nearly empty Congress.

She swore herself in as
interim president of Bolivia.

Anez is a very different
figure from Morales.

She's a conservative woman from the
lowlands, and despite what her features

may suggest, she has emphasized she's
not from an indigenous background, all

this in a majority indigenous country.

She held up a large Bible and
declared a new chapter for Bolivia

to many indigenous Bolivians.

Her ascend was alarming.

Almost immediately, symbols of
indigenous identity came under

attack in La Paz and other cities.

De Wiphala a multicolored indigenous
flag that had been officially

recognized as a national symbol was
pulled down from government buildings.

Some police officers even cut
the Wiphala patch off their

uniforms in front of crowds.

Think about what that means.

A beloved symbol that represents millions
of people ripped away and discarded.

The message was clear.

Your voice, your culture
is not welcome here.

So Morales supporters, were not
only angry about this Ouster.

They were defending their dignity and
their place in Bolivia's narrative, and

they were not only Morale's supporters,
they were the ones who identified

with the indigenous flag, the Wiphala.

It was way beyond him,
probably not at all about him.

Protests swept the country in the
highland city of El Alto, a city

known for its Aymara indigenous pride
neighborhoods organized blockages.

One focal point was the YPFB gas
plant in Senkata, a strategic

fuel supply for the region.

By blocking it, protestors hoped
to pressure the interim government.

Every day, men and women stood
guard at the plant, including many

campesinos, rural peasants, and Aymara
locals, chanting, and waving the wipa.

These protests were largely
peaceful, though passionate.

They were saying, we exist, we matter.

You can't just erase us.

The new government's response was
increasingly hard line President

Anez and her ministers painted the
protestors as violent agitators.

Even terrorists on November
15th, 2019, just three days into

Añez' rule, her administration
issued Supreme Decree 4 0 7 8.

This decree essentially gave the military
and police a blank check to use force.

It said security forces engaged
in restoring order would be

exempt from criminal prosecution.

In other words, a soldier or
officer who shot a protestor

would not face legal consequences.

Human rights groups immediately
condemned this as a carte blanche

for abuse, but the decrease stood, at
least for those critical early days.

Tragically, what many feared would happen?

Did happen on November 15, the same
day after the decree in a town called

Sacaba in Cochabamba, Bolivian,
police and soldiers fired on a march

of Coca leave growers that day left
nine people dead on the roadside,

most shot in the back as they fled.

It was the first massacre of
what Bolivians now call Black

November Sacaba was a warning of
what was to come back in El Alto.

The Senkata blockade
continued to tense up.

Residents were defiant.

They wanted their voices heard,
but also fear what might happen by

November 19, the gas shortage in
the capital La Paz, Was serious.

Senkata was a lifeline and it
was chugged off that morning.

Under orders to break the blockade,
Bolivian soldiers and police

moved in with armored vehicles.

They escorted tanker tracks out of the
plant, and that's when clashes erupted.

Protesters Desperate to stop them.

tried to tear down a wall
to get inside a facility.

Witnesses recall the sound that came
next gunfire, the crack of riffles,

the screams as people dropped to the
ground, security forces armed with live

Ammunition began firing into
the crowds of unarmed civilians.

Some who died weren't even protestors.

They were bystanders, neighbors in their
yards or people watching from afar.

11 lives were taken in
Senkata within hours.

Fathers, sons an adolescent boy,
women, Aymara people whose only

crime had been demanding to be heard

Picture that scene, the grandmother we
imagined at the start could be real.

So many Abuelas in El
Alto lost family that day.

In the aftermath, the survivors and
families gathered in shock and sorrow.

They carried the weal flag and the
coffins of the dead through the

streets defiantly mourning in public.

The poem I shared earlier, I come
with my little things to heal you.

She heals our dead.

She feeds them and listens is
directly speaking to this moment.

The grandmother figure is performing
last rights in a way, tending to the

spirits of those who died, making
sure they are not alone and forgotten.

In Andean beliefs, we honor the dead so
they can transition peacefully and also so

their memory stays alive among the living.

The banished intonation, why that title?

It has a personal meaning
for me and a broader one.

I am a Aymara woman by heritage,
but I grew up speaking Spanish.

My grandparents banished their own
mother thong from the household.

For our sake.

As a child, whenever I walked into a
room where they were chatting in Aymara,

they would abruptly switch to Spanish.

They did this out of love.

They feared that if I spoke Aymara
or even had an accent, society

would treat me as inferior.

In Bolivia, as in many places,
indigenous languages and accents

have been ridiculed and marginalized.

My grandparents sacrificed a
piece of their identity, silencing

their natural intonation, hoping
it would make life easier for me.

That's one kind of banished intonation.

A language of the heart that was
exiled to protect the next generation.

Another kind of banished voice
is what we saw in Senkata.

The attempt to silence a
community's cry for justice.

When those protestors were killed, it was
more than an attack on flesh and blood.

It was an attack on their voice.

An attempt to scare them into silence.

The interim government at the time tried
to control the narrative, initially

denying that forces had fired at all.

calling the dead terrorists to
justify the bloodshed, but the truth

was too loud to banish families and
human rights investigators gathered

bullet casings, documented wounds.

Recorded testimonies.

International observers, like the
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights,

came and listened to the survivors,
ultimately denouncing the events

at Senkata and Sacaba as massacres.

The voices of the dead through their
relatives insisted on being heard.

This is where remembering
becomes powerful.

The title says The Power of
Remembering, because remembering is

an act of presence beyond resistance.

In the poem, she listens to them,
the grandmother listens to the dead.

In reality, the community in El Alto
listens to the dead by speaking their

names, by demanding justice for them.

Even today, people in Bolivia
remember Senkata every year around

November they march, they hold masses.

They tell the stories of
who those victims were.

A father who was on his way home
with groceries, a teenager who

loved playing the charango, a
small andan guitar through memory.

Those banished voices find
their way back into the present.

But memory is not just about pain,
it's also about carrying forward the

love and lessons of those before us.

In the poem excerpt, notice how
generational knowledge is passed down.

The grandmother can't calm
herself to the side of tragedy.

She has stayed with the dead,
perhaps, meaning she herself has

passed away or is bound to the
world of spirits, but she taught me.

The speaker says, in other words, the
wisdom of our ancestors lives through us.

The coca leaves, the healing
ritual, the listening.

These are gifts from the past
that help survive the present.

Let's also touch on the cultural
practice described the idea of

feeling and listening to the dead.

This might sound eerie to some, but
many cultures have similar traditions

in the Andes during All Saints Day and
Día de los Muertos Day of the Dead.

Families will lay out food for
the departed and chew coca,

inviting their souls to visit.

It's a way of saying,
you are still one of us.

After the Senkata massacre, you can
be sure that families lit candles

and offered coca and bread to those
who died, treating them as ancestors.

Now in a very real sense, remembering
them through ceremony helps the living

process grief and ensures that what
happened will not simply fade away.

Now step back and consider the arc.

A language banished in one generation
and lives banished in another.

In both cases.

Love and memory become the remedy.

My grandparents denied me their
language out of love, and now I

invoke that very language, even
if I speak mostly in Spanish or

English, as an act of love and truth.

Telling the people of Senkata
lost their loved ones to violence.

And now keep their memory alive as
a guiding light for social justice.

When we say the banished intonation, we
are talking about finding the lost voice.

It could be the literal voice
of a grandmother's mother

tongue, or the metaphorical
voice of a silenced community.

And the power of remembering is about
using memory to bring that voice

back louder and clearer so that what
was suppressed can guide us forward.

I want to highlight one more
thing from the poem lines.

She feeds them and listens.

She listens to them.

There is a profound reciprocity here.

We often think of listening as something
we do for the living, but this suggests

we must also listen to those who came
before to history, to the whispers

of our ancestors and our martyrs.

What might we hear if we
lean in, perhaps warnings?

Don't let this happen again.

Perhaps encouragement we endured.

And so can you perhaps calls to
action complete the work We could not.

In Senkata's case, the dead might be
saying, remember us seek justice and

build a country where this doesn't repeat.

So how do we take this heavy
heart-wrenching story and carry it

with a strength rather than despair?

How do we apply the wisdom of leaning
in and listening in our everyday lives

far from the high altitude of El Alto?

That brings us to our response
tool for this episode.

The response tool I want to offer
is something I call lean and listen.

It's inspired by the very act of the
grandmother in the poem and the attitude

we need when confronting painful truths.

To lean and listen means to
consciously lean in toward a story

or person in front of you, and
truly listen with full presence.

It sounds simple, almost too basic.

Listen, of course, we all
know how to listen, right?

But do we really, especially when the
story is uncomfortable or challenging,

let me paint a quick real world scenario.

Picture you at your kitchen table
with your grandmother or maybe

an elderly relative or mentor.

You are busy.

The evening news is droning on about
some far away conflict, and you

have a dozen things on your mind.

Then out of the blue, your grandmother
begins to tell a story from her past,

a memory she's never shared before.

Perhaps she mentions living
through political upheaval.

Or how her grandmother told
her something in secret.

Much like our poem story, you might
be tempted to nod absent mindedly or

even interrupt with a question, but
instead you remember lean and listen.

You physically lean forward a bit.

You soften your gaze and you
give her your full attention.

Maybe you reach over and turn off
the TV or put your phone aside.

You say, I'm listening.

Abuela grandma, she notices your shift.

She can tell You actually
want to hear this.

So she continues.

Her voice trembles at first.

These memories are ting with emotion.

She tells you about a night, very much
like the one I described in Senkata, maybe

not with guns and soldiers, but perhaps
with fear or with courage as she speaks.

You resist the urge to jump in with your
own commentary or to hurry her along.

You lean in silently,
maybe giving a gentle nod.

You're not just hearing the words,
you're picking up the tone, the

expressions, the intonation.

Yes, that same word, intonation.

The music of her voice
that carries feelings.

By doing this, you are honoring her story.

You're making a safe space
for a truth to be told.

That is lean and listen at
a one-on-one personal level.

You can practice it anywhere in a
difficult conversation with a friend.

Or even when you encounter a
perspective very different from yours,

instead of instinctively pushing
back or walking away when something

is uncomfortable, try leaning in.

Literally if you are in person or
mentally, if you are reading or hearing

something, and focus on listening.

Listen to learn.

Not just to respond.

Now, how does this integrate
with what we've discussed

about Senkata and remembering?

Well, we just leaned in and listened to
the voices of Senkata's tragedy through

the poem, through the history, and I
can tell you that act is transformative.

It's easy to scroll past news of yet
another conflict, another protest, another

cry for justice in some distant place.

But when you lean in and truly listen,
maybe by listening to someone from

that place or reading a poem they
wrote or hearing an interview of a

survivor, you form a human connection.

You allow yourself to be
changed by what you learn.

For example, let's say a news story
flashes about an indigenous protest

in some country you've never been to.

The typical response might be, oh,
that's sad, and then forget about it.

But what if you pause and lean in?

Perhaps you find a short video of
a witness speaking, or you hear

a podcast that shares a firsthand
perspective like you're doing now.

By listening deeply,
you cultivate empathy.

The next time you hear someone make an
offhand dismissive comment like, ah,

why are those people always protesting?

You might respond differently.

You might remember the grandmother
with her coca leaves or the voices

of the families, and instead
of arguing aggressively, you

could share what you learned.

I used to know much.

I used to not know much about it
either, but I heard this story about

why they are protesting and it moved me.

Lean and listen.

Can also diffuse conflict in our own life.

Consider a workplace scenario.

A colleague from a marginalized background
points out something that upset them.

Maybe a joke in poor taste or
feeling excluded in a meeting.

It might make others defensive, but
if you practice leaning and listening,

you become an ally in that moment.

You could respond.

I hear you.

I'd really like to understand
more about what you're feeling.

Just that willingness to hear someone out.

Without defensiveness is powerful.

It creates trust.

It validates their experience.

Often people raise their voices
only when they feel unheard.

By listening, you reduce
the need for shouting.

Let's tie this back to the heart portal
concept I mentioned in the intro.

The heart portal is this idea
of a space where tough dialogue

turns into luminous love.

Lean, and listen is one
key to that alchemy.

It's a tool you carry in your heart.

It doesn't require a special training.

Just the courage to be present and
the humility to admit you don't

know everything when confronted
with a story of suffering.

Be it your grandmothers, your friends,
or news of strangers, you can lean in,

listen deeply and say, I am here with you.

In that simple act memory, their
story, their pain transforms into

connection, and connection is what heals.

It's what turns memory into
fuel for positive change instead

of just lingering trauma.

As we close this episode, let's
gather the threads together.

Memory has weight, and we've been carrying
some heavy memories today of a massacre

in Senkata of ancestors who hid their
language to protect their grandchildren.

These stories can break our hearts,
but in the Breaking the heart

opens like a portal, inviting us
to step through with compassion.

The banished intonation can
be a grandmother's tongue or

a silence community's cry.

By remembering and listening, we
invite those banished voices back

into the circle of the living.

We say you matter.

I carry you with me.

The poem's, imagery of healing with
little humble things, hers, coca

leaves, touch and attentive listening
shows us that even when faced with

great tragedy, small acts done with
great love can help solve the wounds.

We honor the dead by naming
them and listening to what

their lives and death stitches.

We honor the living by leaning
and listening to each other,

especially to those whose voices
are too often pushed aside.

Take a moment after this podcast
to reflect whose voice in my life

might be banished or ignored.

It could be an elder in your family.

A minority viewpoint in your
community or even a part of yourself

you've been avoiding, what would it
mean to lean in and listen there?

There is a fearless presence that
arises when we do this fearless,

because like the grandmother in the
poem, we come armed with love and

tradition, not weapons or anger,
and there is communal art in it too.

Think of a visual with everybody
singing an old protest song

or a shared moment of silence.

There are communities turning memory
into something beautiful and strong

everywhere at every given moment.

In remembering Senkata, we do
more than revisit a dark moment.

We also celebrate the courage of
those who stood up and the resilience

of those who keep the memory alive.

We remind ourselves that languages might
be banished, but they can be recovered.

That justice might be delayed, but
people will keep pushing for it.

The heart beats on the story
continues, and we become the

storytellers for the next generation.

Thank you for journeying
Inside the Heart Portal.

If these converging voices steered you,
follow, review and pass the echo on.

Until next time, keep shaping memory
into fearless presence and communal art.