There are 3,000 shoe shiners who go out into the streets of La Paz and El Alto suburbs each day in search of clients. They are from all ages and, in recent years, have become a social phenomenon in the Bolivian capital.

What characterizes this tribe is their use of ski masks to avoid being recognized by those around them. They confront the discrimination they face through these masks; in their neighborhoods, no one knows that they work as shoe shiners. At school, they hide this fact, and even their own families believe they have a different job when they head down to the center of the city from El Alto.

The mask is their strongest identity, making them invisible while at the same time uniting them. This collective anonymity makes them tougher when facing the rest of society and is their resistance against the exclusion they suffer because of their work.

For three years Federico Estol has been collaborating with sixty shoe shiners associated with the organization “Hormigón Armado.” We planned the scenes together during a series of graphic novel workshops, incorporating local elements of the urbanity of El Alto and producing photographic sessions with them as co-authors of an emancipation photo-essay to fight against social discrimination.