Domitila Barrios de Chungara (7 May 1937 – 13 March 2012) was a Bolivian labor leader and feminist. In 1975 she participated in the International Women's Year Tribune put on by the United Nations in Mexico. She died in Cochabamba, Bolivia, on 13 March 2012 of lung cancer.
Housewives' Committee
In 1961, seventy women organized the Housewives’ Committee in the tin mine Siglo XX. They were the wives of miners who had demanded higher wages and been subsequently imprisoned in La Paz, about 200 miles from Siglo XX. One by one, these women went to La Paz to find their husbands and one by one, they returned demoralized. They decided go together to La Paz and though they were confronted by the barzolas of the Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, their husbands’ demands were met after the women staged a ten-day hunger strike. It was then that they created the Housewives’ Committee. It was organized like a union and concerned little with Western feminism, though men were still initially hesitant to accept female leadership.
Domitila Barrios de Chungara would join the committee in 1963, leaving a community of Jehovah’s Witnesses, which denounced the committee as a work of Satan. In 1964, General René Barrientos came to power in Bolivia. Barrientos issued a wage reduction, claiming the Corporación Minera de Bolivia (COMIBOL), the second largest tin enterprise in the world, was bankrupt and everyone, including the army, would have to give up some of his or her wages. In May 1965, The Housewives’ Committee issued a manifesto in protest. The leader of the Housewives’ Committee, Líchen Oquendo was arrested and the husbands of the wives of the Housewives’ Committee deported. Líchen Oquendo would be replaced by Norberta de Aguilar, wife of an old company worker.
Through the Housewives’ Committee, Domitila would organize the Committee of the Unemployed, representing women willing to work at the rock pile. These women would unknowingly be signed over to the leadership of government agent, but Domitila would ensure their severance pay and established a co-op between the workers and the government.
In June 1967, the army staged a one-day massacre in Siglo XX. The San Juan Massacre resulted in the death of about 400 people in Siglo XX. The army had feared of a meeting of secretary-generals that was to take place the following day. Domitila denounced the massacre and in a few day's time, she was arrested.
In 1967, Domitila returned from the International Women Year’s Tribune, and resumed as secretary general of the Housewives’ Committee. The following May, at a miner’s congress in Corocoro, it was decided that Housewives’ Committees would be organized in all the mines and form the National Housewives’ Federation. Unfortunately, no such organization ever materialized.
In 1971, General Hugo Banzer forced his way into power. In his first years in office, Banzer tried to change the image of the government. As such, Domitila was offered a job working with the Ministry of the Interior, with wages higher than her husband’s and benefits for her children. She declined, fearing that her image as a barzola would make others question the loyalty of the Housewives’ Committee to the workers.
Barrientos had outlawed the union but when the decree of monetary devaluation came out, the Housewives’ Committee demanded a raise in living allowance at the company grocery store. The women were tear gassed at the Plaza del Minero in Siglo XX in the midst of a demonstration. They proceeded to write a letter to the manager of COMIBOL and when they had received no response, they gathered another demonstration in Catavi.
Domitila’s work with the Housewives’ Committee would lead to her arrest, her forced exile to Oruro and later to Los Yungas, because the military has suspected her of communist activity. She struggled with guilt over her involvement with the committee during her time in Los Yungas—over the loss of a child, her husbands’ blacklist status, and moreover, her place as a woman. However, it was with the Housewives’ Committee that Domitila would see herself as a leader, to sentence her children to death for the liberation struggle.