Bolivia

Skyrocketing prices and anger at the government drove many women in protest onto the streets in La Paz, Bolivia. The hunger strike which followed was their only course of action to avoid starvation.

'We can't afford meat anymore or even milk for our children. We have nothing to eat.' This stark statement comes from one of the hundred or so women who took to the streets in Bolivia's capital in 1985. The women were acting in solidarity with workers in a general strike initiated by the miners who were feeling the pinch of falling tin prices and the imposition of International Monetary Fund (IMF) conditions as the country struggled to repay its US$5,000 million debt.

The women, from the Amas de Casa (Housewives' Committee), were demanding the setting up of 'popular stores' for the poorest people, to provide them with basic necessities such as milk, kerosene for cooking, rice and soup. They wanted the stores to have fixed prices and to be run by themselves, without middlemen to cream off a profit.

There were women of all ages and social backgrounds, united in their poverty. Some were street-sellers in the markets, trading fruits and vegetables. They were outside the main trade union movement, but had built up a stalwart organisation through meeting and exchanging ideas in their own districts and then electing representatives to the national federation of Amas de Casa. It was one of the first times that such women — poor and marginalised — had shown their capacity to organise and lead.

'I left my children in the charge of the eldest,' said Macedonia Constanza, mother of seven. 'They showed great courage during their eleven-day strike, eating nothing and drinking only mate (a herbal tea).'

As the general strike gathered momentum, thousands of the members of the newly formed Amas de Casa in La Paz marched through the streets, and took part in demonstrations, blockades and negotiations. With husbands often unemployed, and no state social benefits the women were desperate.

The government was also desperate, squeezed by forces — such as the IMF — outside its immediate control. The miners accepted a paltry pay increase offer; and there was no resounding success for the women. But these poorest of women were enriched by the experience. 'We are fighting for everyone, especially our children,' explains Florentina Condori. 'Some people work in unions or political parties, or they write articles, but we cannot read or write. But we came because we had to.'

Adapted from 'Hunger Strike to Avoid Starvation', in Spare Rib, No. 159, October 1985.