Barrios de Chungara, Domitila

(1937– )

   Bolivian labor activist and author. An indigenous Aymara woman from the Potosí region in the Bolivian highlands, Barrios de Chungara was born into a family of miners and trade unionists in an area renowned historically for the mineral richness of its soil and the profound poverty of most of its inhabitants. Mined since the time of the Incas, the region of Potosí was one of the most important centers of silver mining during Spanish colonial rule, and in the 20th century, it witnessed the exploitation of tin mines, which represented one of the principal sources of wealth for the landlocked Andean nation. Married to a miner at 20, Barrios de Chungara experienced a continuation of the deprivation of her youth, when she was kept out of school as the eldest of five to care for her siblings after her mother’s death. The intense cold of the Andean mountains is encapsulated in her description of watching her own urine freeze as a child outside a home that lacked the minimum standards of comfort. She also experienced the oppression common to an indigenous community under various military regimes in her country. With increased militancy, Barrios de Chungara joined the Comité de Amas de Casa (Committee of Housewives) of the Siglo XX mining sector in 1963. The Comité de Amas de Casa, organized in 1961, was initially a grassroots movement created to look after family concerns in the mining sectors which soon itself was battling the patriarchal Indigenous society in an effort to expand their visibility within trade unions.

   She has eloquently described her experiences in her testimonial narrative Si me permiten hablar . . . Testimonio de Domitila, una mujer de las minas de Bolivia (with Moezza Viezzer, 1977, translated in 1979 as Let me speak!: Testimony of Domitila, a Woman of the Bolivian Mines). In her book, she denounced the Massacre of San Juan, an event that occurred in the early morning hours of 24 June 1967, when striking miners and their families were attacked, under orders from General René Barrientos, by military troops following a traditional gathering celebrating the eve of St. John, a Roman Catholic festivity. She also described her torture at the hands of the military following her detention, which resulted in her imprisonment, during which she went into early labor and miscarried.

   Her increased political activism—in a continent all-too accustomed to silence from the cholas, the Indigenous women—garnered her an invitation to the International Year of the Woman Congress organized by the United Nations in Mexico in 1975. In a memorable moment, Barrios de Chungara exchanged recriminations with the president of the Mexican delegation, who insisted in putting labor issues aside in favor of “purely” feminist issues. On that occasion, Barrios de Chungara’s initial words to the group si me permiten hablar (if I’m allowed to speak) and the address to follow revealed the deep racial and class differences that still divide women in Latin America and gave the title to her best-selling testimony. Back in Bolivia, Barrios de Chungara and three of her fellow “housewives,” including 20 children, initiated a hunger strike in the offices of the daily Presencia, demanding amnesty for some 340 labor and political leaders in exile. Soon, thousands of their countrymen joined the strike, among them a delegation from the Asamblea Permanente de los Derechos Humanos de Bolivia (APDHB, Permanent Assembly for Human Rights in Bolivia) from Cochabamba and Luis Espinal Camps, a Spanish-born Bolivian Jesuit priest who would be murdered by paramilitary groups in 1980. Twenty-two days later, General Hugo Banzer Suárez announced open elections for the following year and declared he would not be a candidate for the next elections. Ironically, Banzer Suárez in later years would rehabilitate his image and return to Bolivian politics as president until 2001, when ill health forced him to resign.

   Invited to a conference on women in Denmark in 1980, she was forced to remain in exile following the military coup by General Luís García Meza. According to a 1989 interview, for over seven months she ignored the fate of her family. She would remain in Europe, mostly in Sweden, for two and a half years. In 1982, with the return of democracy, Barrios de Chungara returned to the Siglo XX mine, the place she had called home since infancy. Life for her family would become increasingly difficult with the closure of the Bolivian tin mines in 1986. Like thousands of miners soon to be displaced, Barrios de Chungara joined the massive March for Life and Peace demonstration to no avail. Miners, who never owned the deeds to their houses and had 90 days to vacate them should they cease to work for the company, were forced to vacate their homes. Though her husband remained working for a while, Barrios de Chungara was forced to move to the city of Cochabamba. Luckier than many, by her own account, she had been able to purchase land with the proceeds from the sale of her book. She moved into a two-room house, in the poor district of Hayrakasa, with four of her remaining seven children. The following years were difficult for the family as Bolivia was plunged into economic chaos. A vocal critic of past and present Bolivian administrations, Barrios de Chungara was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. She continues to live in Cochabamba, Bolivia.