Patch suggested by Hannah and designed and sewn by her friend Liz Cohen; writing by Liz

“Democracia en el país y en la casa”

This patch weaves together stories from women who recognize that the struggles they face in their personal lives reflect the tapestry of issues that must be addressed on a political and/or societal level.  The main image came from an anecdote in Let Me Speak! Testimony of Domitila, A Woman of the Bolivian Mines.[1]  Domitila and her husband, a tin miner in Siglo XX, the largest mining camp in Bolivia, have both devoted their lives to organizing for the rights of the poor all over Bolivia.  Though they speak as a united front with regard to their political action and work together to maintain their home to support themselves and their seven children with poverty-level wages, Domitila recognized that her husband did not seem to acknowledge that the work she did was as valuable as his was.  She explains on page 35:

In spite of everything we do, there’s still the idea that women don’t work, because they don’t contribute economically to the home, that only the husband works because he gets a wage…

One day I got the idea of making a chart.  We put for example the price of washing clothes per dozen pieces and we figured out how many dozen items we washed per month.  Then the cook’s wage, the babysitter’s, the servant’s.  We figured out everything that we miners’ wives do everyday.  Adding it all up, the wage needed to pay us for what we do in the home…was much higher than what the men earned in the mine for a month.  So, that way we made our compañeros understand that we really work, and even more than they do in a certain sense.  And that we even contribute more to the household with what we save.  So, even though the state doesn’t recognize what we do in the home, the country benefits from it, because we don’t receive a single penny for this work.

And as long as we continue in the present system, things will always be like this.  That’s why I think it’s so important for us revolutionaries to win that first battle in the home.  And the first battle to be won is to let the women, the children, and the men participate in the struggle of the working class, so that the home can be a stronghold that the enemy can’t overcome.  Because, if you have the enemy inside your own house, then it’s just one more weapon that our common enemy can use toward a dangerous end.  That’s why it’s really necessary that we have really clear ideas about the whole situation and that we throw our forever that bourgeois idea that the woman should stay home and not get involved in other things, in union or political matters, for example.  Because, even if she’s only at home, she is part of the whole system of exploitation that her compañero lives in anyway, working in the mine or in the factory or wherever – isn’t that true?

Domitila’s astute analysis is echoed across Latin America by women in Chile. Each time the folkloric group associated with the arpilleristas begins to dance La Cueca Sola, the women carry out a banner that reads, “Democracia en el país y en la casa.” (Democracy in the nation and in the home.) The women all recognize that authentic change will only happen when a balance of power is given to all members of society.