Today we’d like to introduce you to Áurea María Altamirano Cuaresma.

Hi Áurea María, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.

I was born in Lima, Peru in 1983. I studied elementary and high school in the public schools; Los Reyes Rojos and Sagrado Corazón in my district, Chorrillos. I was a child with a passion for creating and expressing visual and written art. Perhaps not long ago, I could not see a clear direction of my path, but at this moment with this interview, I am completing a more complete figure, my own map, my quipu of life.

As a teenager, I continued creating psycho-social theories about how we could “fix society”. Also I was frustrated because there were no mentors around, nor many opportunities to develop further to create change. Then, I had to start to participate more in the real world; focus on school, and support my parents at our bazaar business at the local market, while taking side jobs in summer schools, tutoring children, selling everyday products, walking, or smuggling snacks at school, to pay for my field trips and help my parents with some of the bills, which mostly of then were my idea. I knew they needed help and I wanted to do it. I did not want to feel so powerless in front of our economic situation.

When the professional day came, in my last year of high school, our teachers asked who would choose to be a teacher, and all hid our hands. No one wanted to study a profession that was so devalued morally, and economically attacked. After all, if people did not care, why should we take that road? Society saw teachers as people with small aspirations. I realized I was probably in denial. All I did the last two summers was tutoring children. The only thing clear to me was my father studied the profession with so much effort and he could not earn enough to feed the family. 

Around fourteen, I started to write poems about love and my existential crisis. Against the odds, at fifteen, I decided to take the National test for Federico Villarreal University and got a placement for Education in Lengua y Literatura, because of my love for writing, but in the end, I graduated with a degree in Child Development which would allow me better to develop my creativity towards visual art and earn some money teaching at the same time, and perhaps have my own preschool. 

In 2008, I immigrated to Berkeley, California, to work as an au pair and continue my studies as part of a cultural exchange experience while caring for the children of a host family. My initial experience was not what I expected. I suffered emotional abuse from my host mother. It took more than a year to recover from it. Later, I got married and had my son in 2008, then when he entered preschool, I could slow down and take some art classes. The Critique and Creative Process class moved my world again, reawakening my need to recover my personal and community identity. An assignment was about Cecilia Vicuna, a Chilean artist who talked about the connection with the ecosystem, the Ancient Latino Culture, and feminism. I knew I had to develop my own voice, represent my community, and redefine myself as a woman, and also as a mother. I got very involved in two clubs, The Latino American Club and The Floetry Club, poetry with flow. 

In Peru, I was a member, writer, and collaborator of two student literary magazines of my university, Ática and Katarsis, so I decided to extend my experience to others by founding El Grupo Latino de Arte y Poesia, to organize events for exposure of our art representing our culture, as The Poetry at the Altar and Open Mic Event, 2016 and the group art exhibition, Las artes Latinoamericanas, in 2017 and The Latino Art Show, 2018. Along with publishing some poems in the Berkeley Times, in its Annual Poetry Edition, and some paintings, drawings, and photographs in Milvia Street Journal, also participated as an altar maker in the Oakland Day of the Dead Festival in Oakland in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021.

Most recently, I published my first book, Mariposa de Fuego: A Journey to Empowerment, in English, in July 2024, and in Spanish, Mariposa de Fuego: Un camino al Empoderamiento, in December 2024., and have been assembling a Latin American Anthology, soon to be released in April 2025, with poems by Latino immigrant poets, as a needed uplifting response to actual frustrating socio-political situation U.S. is living. The world needs to remember resilience and the value of the immigrants. This country is made of us, and this book will give them a voice in their stories. Este es nuestro granito de arena. Together we can survive and find a way to thrive in unprecedented circumstances.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?

It sometimes seems like I was not born for smooth roads. I am still working on accepting that some circumstances just happen, and it does not mean I should stay in them. It is on me to transform them into something I could work with, and even better leverage, an opportunity for a positive change.

While still studying Education at the university in Peru, I worked at some preschool private and public, which taught me the basis for my profession, but when I finished and started to work on my own, I did not have any protection from the university and experienced various types of abuse; economical and emotional in my own skin. Especially from some in the private sector, they did not pay on time, making us work on weekends without pay with toxic strategies. I was disheartened and started to lose hope in the profession. 

One day a program for cultural exchange came to the university and made me question myself about if the issue was the profession or the country. I changed my path and decided to travel to U.S. to experience the program. Sadly, I had an abusive experience with my first host family. They made me work overtime, using gaslighting and other emotional manipulations, and restricted or charged me for food and board which was supposed to be included since we earned just a tip. I could not believe I had these issues in U. S. I refused to lose hope one more time, so I fought for my right to change the host family and present enough probes to take them out of the program. I did not want other participants to experience what I did. Furthermore, I learned that the family had already a history of doing the same, but any au pair tried to stop that, they just changed that family, or sometimes went back to their country. I understood. Without the support of your own family, enough language or resources, and carrying homesickness is hard enough, so barely you can keep going for your educational dream. They could not afford to worry about fighting for justice. 

I got a much better situation with a new host family. They were fair and respected my work and study schedules. Some months later, I came back to visit some nannies friends, and they told me my former host family just changed programs and got a new au pair.  I became friends with her but did not say anything at first. I wanted to see if she had better luck. Soon, she confessed my ex-host parents were doing the same to her, so I encouraged her to leave and accompanied her through most of the process. She seemed to have a nice new host family. Six months later, I found her at a store and she seemed happier and healthier and told me she had a much better experience. I felt happy, I could help her.

A friend recommended I get an international student visa to have the chance to study because my opportunities had gotten shorter because of the situation with my ex-host family. She had done it too, so it was possible. Then, I worked three jobs to pay for a student visa, because my tuition was two hundred percent more expensive than a regular student’s. I took Child Development-related classes at Merrit College and General courses at Berkeley City College. There were some overwhelming and exhausting years until I started to get lower grades and was barely keeping up. My friend got cancer and thankfully, she could receive treatment from her university health care system. That was a call for me to lower my intensity, my health was not in good shape. By this time I had gotten married and had my son, so he, my friend, and I went for walks by the Berkeley Marina looking to accompany my friend in her process, in this way, she could do soft exercises and talk. But in reality, she was accompanying us. Fortunately, my friend went into remission. She told us she decided to go back to Chile, to have the support of her family and not feel so alone. Homesickness sometimes takes many years to be surpassed. Now, I have my son, husband, and my in-law family here. I only could continue to try to adjust emotionally, and bureaucratically. It has not been easy to understand the system of things here.

I started to work as a nanny, and then in preschools, but only where they accepted me with my child. Later, when I had to leave him in school and then, afterschool for so many hours due to work and study, my son got separation issues. And I experienced mother’s guilt. Even during the pandemic of COVID 19, he was at home with me, but I was teaching and could not pay him much attention. Then, my father passed away in Lima due to the negligence of the healthcare system, I sank into depression. In addition, I have been dealing with marital issues for a while already. This affected the care of my son and my relationship with him since the Lockdown and the politics of social distancing exacerbated his already existing issue of social anxiety. He needed much more support, and I only exposed him to my depression and grief. After a year of dealing with my own recovery through personal care and therapy, I had to deal with the aftermath of my son’s mental health and his school refusal. The next three years, I spent learning to navigate and fighting for better support from the school district and another two years reconnecting with him and recovering my self-esteem as a mother. I am still working on it, and I know it will never end. Now, that he has reached his teens, I am still learning to overcome my cultural clash to be a better parent of a Chicano teenager.

My latest triumph has been getting his support the night I was painting the wings of Mariposa de Fuego. It was already two in the morning. I had some things come up, so I was behind and exhausted. The presentation was the next day, and the wings needed time to dry. My son, I don’t know how he woke up and asked me if he could help. His dad and I had been in the midst of the separation and he had been frustrated for a couple of weeks with the situation, so his opening up and being empathic meant a lot for us, a step closer to our healing as mother and son, and a moment to cherish forever.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?

My specialization is in Child Development. I love to work with children between the ages of five and eight. Being a facilitator, supporting them with educational activities and emotionally in their learning, and seeing their faces when they connect the dots in their projects is an invaluable experience. It is rewarding as an educator. I have been teaching children formally for about twenty years now, ten years in Peru and ten years here, but previously, I had been an English tutor, summer school teacher, and preschool assistant. More recently, I have been working at BAHIA, a bilingual afterschool program, which allows me to teach in Spanish.

Teaching Spanish Grammar is my other great passion. I have been teaching it for more than ten years in parallel to teaching children in preschool. I partially teach at Centro Latino language school and at my private practice, Aprendiendo Español con Áurea. In both, I intend to create an environment of immersion for all my students, from the beginners to the advanced ones. I teach in-person, online, one-to-one, and hybrid classes. I also have experience teaching family groups, and multilevel. I have conversational, writing, and reading groups open. You can find me on Facebook as Aureamaria Altamirano or on my page aureamaria.com, or contact me to register for classes at [email protected] .

To me, everything can be a starting point for learning Spanish. Everything related to the engineering of the dialogue and storytelling production, its construction, including its grammar, pronunciation, syntaxis, and cultural nuances is an opportunity to work in our way to develop fluency. Again, it is very exciting to use scaffolding learning, providing students with temporary support and gradually decreasing assistance until they master the structures and vocabulary. The mixture of scaffolding and immersion, with other techniques, such as physical action learning, considering the age, level, and other needs make my classes fun and directed to meaningful learning. 

Furthermore, having my private practice allows me to extend and tailor the language learning experience, creating unique opportunities to be exposed to immersion, in a positive emotional circle where students feel comfortable expressing their Spanish. Many of them have become friends because of the shared experience. I encourage using grammar from day one, through conversation, games, music, movies, art, field trips to sites, writing or reading groups, and picnic or walk classes outside in nature while receiving real-time grammar and vocabulary feedback.

I taught students from four to eighty years old, one to one, and in groups. I had adult students who had emotional blocks because of a history of family trauma related to the prohibition of speaking Spanish, with enough emotional support, and others, who previously tried to learn it were frustrated with the language. We have found a way to make it simpler, understandable, and fun, so it can be a meaningful process of learning that can fulfill them instead, so they can go to the world to use it to communicate with new people on their trips, use it in their professions, or to get closer with their loved ones.

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?

I was a very interesting child. I was a hardworking, focused, well-spoken little girl who knew what she wanted from life. I was Superniña, one of the characters from my book Mariposa de Fuego.  

I had the soul of a businesswoman. At four, I started to sell candies and cigarettes at the town assemblies and gatherings. I wanted to use my math to help my parents. Later, we had a small business selling non-comestible products, such as clothes and school materials, cassettes, and toys, at a fair in the next town on the weekends for about eight years. So, I created all kinds of commercial strategies to get clients, from singing to advertising discounts, and layaways, to offering door-to-door. I sometimes got my parents in trouble because I did not ask them first. I learned all those tricks from seeing my own parents and also other people’s businesses around. In this way, at twelve, I created my own summer business, selling cleaning products and summer products necessities in a market closer to my house. I got to sell the same amount that my father did with his salary, which made me proud but also sad. I was relieved my parents finally decided to change to the location I found and downsized because it was hard work, pedaling and pushing those heavy cargo tricycles full of products each Saturday and Sunday. I continued helping my parents until I was at the university.

Related to art, the first art experience that I can remember was when I was five years old. I started a project of unusual maps; internal maps in the shape of animals, that told stories about their lives. I continued by drawing maps of my own house, town, and regions of my natal Peru. I lost the book, but I always remember the feeling of creating something unique and meaningful to me and perhaps to others. Later on, at twelve, I also got obese with two other projects for my high school; one about myths and Legends of Peru and the other about Incan Art. Drawing and retelling the stories, and replicating the Incas’ vases and textiles made me very proud and feel I was doing something so we don’t lose or forget our national treasures. Another particular story that tells me how conscious already I was when I was about eight, I felt so scared by news about the Conflict Peru-Ecuador of the nineties. Each night for about two or three weeks, I prayed for it to stop before escalating to a war. To my eyes, it worked. I believed and still believe in a supreme force that comes from within people when they wish for good. Now, in my forties, I realize it is much better to do an action, even if it is small, nuestro granito de arena than pray, but as a child, it gave me some peace.  

My book, Mariposa de Fuego, is subtitled, Embracing the Dreams of the Inner Girl. 

It also marks the beginning of my conscious work to make her dreams come true, to fulfill my inner child’s destiny. This dream created by and for myself is based on my values and using my own voice. I hope this book will serve as a guide and inspiration for healing. Healing never ends, it is a process that we must continue throughout our lives, but it will always need traveling back to childhood to heal the inner child first to have a profound meaning.

Pricing:

• https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?IYdI2PsJBU8AJFuahij7KpDZ85lIEiY25sAWawgATZx

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Aureamaria.com
• Instagram: Aurea484
• Facebook: AureaMaria Altamirano
• LinkedIn: Aurea Altamirano

Image Credits

Pictures at La Peña Event, taken by La Peña photographer.