Margarita Laime is a subsistence farmer and also works in the La Imilla knitting co-operative outside the city of Cochabamba, in the foothills of the Bolivian Andes. She was born 39 years ago in the same area. Margarita was eight years old when her mother died and she went to live with her grandmother. The work was hard and food so scarce that she and other children resorted to stealing it. Margarita and other women set up the knitting cooperative in 1980.

Norma de Salguero was born at the Catavi Tin Mine. She has been working since she was seven when her father died. Caring for her brother. Norma made bread and sold it in the market to keep them both alive. Then she married a miner at age nineteen. Now the mines have been shut down and Norma and her family have no idea where they will go because they live on mine property.

Margarita and Norma are not passive victims of Third World destiny. Margarita helped to establish the knitting co-operative because she and her friends were tired of being exploited by subcontractors. Norma is a leader in the miners' struggle against the government.

But both have experienced Bolivia's walking nightmare: the crisis of international debt. Both have seen inflation rocket. Margarita has seen the clothes she sells become unsaleable because no-one has the money to buy them. Norma has seen the destruction of an entire mining industry and her home and husband's job removed. They, like the majority of women in Bolivia, are at the sharp end of cuts in basic services like health, education, transport. And they have seen prices for their main foods like bread and potatoes soar.

Bolivia's present economic situation and the social cost reflect what is also happening in many other indebted Third World countries. The witnesses to the human misery caused by crisis and mismanagement are Bolivian women themselves, who speak out in the film "Hell to Pay".

Women — Shouldering the Burden

The standard of living of most Bolivian families is extremely low by Latin American and international standards, despite the potential wealth to be gained from the country's abundant natural resources.

"As women we are conscious that we do the work. We contribute to the national economy and it hurts us that our work isn't valued."

Magarita Laime

If the poor family is on the bottom rung of the economic ladder, women in the household will be on that invisible rung below. Most Bolivian women carry a back-breaking burden. With less education, fewer paid job opportunities and lower pay prospects than men, they experience the discrimination faced by women everywhere.

But they also put up with often unspoken deprivation. As poor women they care for their families and manage the household with no paid help or labour saving devices. And they often have other jobs inside or outside the home. Little of this is recognised as "work", often even by the women themselves. Many peasant women, whose day spans 16 hours of labour, are classified as "not working".

When times are hard it is the mother who goes without so that children won't starve and who struggle that much harder to make ends meet. They also take on the extra caring for the sick and elderly that worsening health services impose on the household.

And not all women can share a man's income. In the cities, over a third of heads of families are women. Added to this, 55 per cent of Bolivians are Indians, who are regarded by the rest of society as ignorant outcasts. So that Indian women live with an extra litany of abuse. In addition, living in a Third World country stricken by debt means that poor women, one of the most downtrodden groups, are among the worst affected.

These are the people who have been affected adversely by the debt and the government's draconian measures to 'adjust' the economy. Women are less literate than men and vitally need education. Childbirth requires medical care and hospital beds to deal with complications. Constant pregnancies require adequate nutrition. It is precisely such services — deprived by the country's economic mismanagement and then shattered by the economic 'cures' backed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) —that women most need, in order to lighten their load and achieve greater independence

Source: A Viewer's Guide, published by the International Broadcasting Trust to accompany Hell To Pay, Mira Films Production. Available from Cinema of Women, 27 Clerkenwell Close, London ECIR OAT, U