Bolivia
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Domitila Barrios de Chungara
Catavi, Siglo XX, Potosí, Bolivia
Archival Overview
Legendary indigenous Bolivian labor leader from the Siglo XX tin mines whose courageous hunger strikes brought down Hugo Banzer's dictatorship and whose testimony 'Let Me Speak!' made global feminist history.
Biographical Record
Domitila Barrios de Chungara was born on May 7, 1937, in the mining camp of Catavi, Potosí. Married to a miner, she lived amidst horrific conditions and organized the Housewives' Committee of Siglo XX to defend miners' families against military repression. She survived the San Juan Massacre of 1967 and brutal military imprisonment and torture.
In 1975, she electrified the UN International Women's Year Conference in Mexico City, confronting bourgeois feminists and insisting that working-class women's liberation required anti-imperialist solidarity. In Christmas 1977, Domitila and four other miners' wives launched a hunger strike in La Paz that swelled to thousands across Bolivia, directly forcing dictator Hugo Banzer to decree a general amnesty and hold democratic elections.
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Final Resting Place
Perpetual MemorialCochabamba, Bolivia