Let Me Speak! How a Bolivian Woman from a Mining Town Challenges U.S. Perceptions of Latin American Women

Let Me Speak! is the story of Domilita, a woman from a Bolivian mining town turned union organizer, human rights advocate, and transnational feminist. It is also a testimonio (testimony), a specific genre of literature from Latin America that uses a first person narrative to denounce human rights abuses and political oppression. Though her testimonio, Domitila tells the reader about the living conditions of women and workers in Bolivia’s mining sector. Yet, it also serves an explicitly political purpose; she unequivocally uses her life story to educate her audience about non-Western feminism and the intersection of class and gender struggles in modern Bolivia.

In a U.S. classroom, Domitila’s story helps advance important critiques about Western feminism and derogatory narratives of women in Latin America. First, she proposes that class and gender struggles cannot be separated in Bolivia, and critiques Western feminism (which she encounters at an international tribunal in 1974) for describing feminism as a struggle against men. Instead, she advances an understanding of feminism, commonly found in other testimonio literature, that argues that women and men in places like Bolivia must work together create a society where they both “have the right to live, to work, to organize.” In doing so, she criticizes Western feminism for silencing non-Western women’s struggles, especially in politically repressive societies, and for assuming that women the world over share the same concerns. In this way, Domitila’s testimonio counteracts prevalent stereotypes of Latin American women as passive, apolitical victims of a patriarchal and macho society.