‘Let Me Speak’ is the name of her famous book. Moema Viezzer is the co-author. It has been the object of numerous translations and editions. In it, Domitila Chungara (born in 1937), a Bolivian indigenous, speaks. Daughter and wife of miners, she survived a massacre and the denunciation she made conducted her to imprisonment. She has been put in jail and tortured numerous times. She had seven children, but lost four of them because of this violence. Later, along with other women, she began a hunger strike that gathered support and brought down Hugo Bánzer, the Bolivian dictator.
Her book: In it, Domitila recounts her personal life in the tin mines in her country. Her suffering at home, parallel her suffering at the mines where women have been devoid of power when deciding what is better for them. In her life, she experiences exploitation not only by the mine owners, but also by the patriarchal system in Bolivia.
She tells of hardships and abuse which seems to be the part of everyday life in the mining towns. A long time militant fighting for the well-being of women in her country, Domitila believes in education and political action as the basis for social change. As today, she has moved away from the mines and lives in Cochabamba.
Domitila Barrios de Chungara was the leader of the Housewives’ Committee of one of Bolivia’s militant mining communities. She was born on May 27, 1937, in the mining community of Siglo XX, in Potosi, Bolivia. At the age of three her family moved further South to Pulacayo, a small mining district in the province of Quijarro, also in Potosi, where she lived until 1957. When Domitila Barrios was ten years old her mother died, making Domitila the sole caretaker of her four sisters. In spite of assuming the parental responsibilities of a mother and putting up with her father’s alcoholism and physical abuse, Domitila completed grade school in 1952. Later, she started working in the mining company’s grocery store. Escaping from her father’s beatings, she moved back to her birthplace at Siglo XX when she was twenty years old. Soon after she married René Chungara with whom she had seven children. In 1963, Domitila joined the Housewives’ Committee of Siglo XX, two years after its formation. As an active member of this women’s group, Domitila learned the ways and the hardships of organizing a community-based group to demand better living and working conditions for their families and their miner husbands. As one of the leaders of the Housewives’ Committee Domitila participated in several hunger strikes. Due to her activism in favor of the mining community of Siglo XX, and as it happened to other women leaders in the committee, she was persecuted, jailed, tortured and relocated to minimize and silence her protest. Details of the horrendous repression acted by the government and its allies upon the indigenous people of Siglo XX, and specifically upon Domitila Barrios are revealed in her testimonial.
