I was only 10 when I first watched the Pixar film Wall-E in 2008. I immediately liked the character — that small, ugly, square-shaped robot with a far bigger ecological conscience than any human being I know. I couldn’t stop thinking I was a bit like Wall-E because I, too, wanted to make my town less polluted. I also always liked the idea of recycling the electronics that people throw away, so I decided to try and use discarded items to make my very own Wall-E.
It took me six years to do it, but I finally finished making my replica of the robot in 2014. As well as building it, I had to find a way to make it move, so I created some software to send it some basic commands, which I then installed on my mobile phone. I got all the materials I needed from the local waste dump because my family would never have been able to afford to buy them new. People throw all kinds of stuff there, from animal carcasses to food and electronics.
I was born and raised in Patacamaya, one of the poorest communities in Bolivia. My mother never had the time to study because her family was very poor and she had to start working when she was young. My father was a construction worker until a couple of years ago, when chronic back pain forced him to quit his job.
I owe my passion for electronics to my father. He used to make wooden toy cars for me and my brother when we were little, and I would always sit next to him. Gradually, I began practising on my own, at first making small objects from copper wires and then moving on to increasingly complex designs — a toy car with bulbs that light from left to right, like the Kitt car from the 1980s American TV series Knight Rider, or an LED cube which displays 3D images.
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