Source: https://vimeo.com/38502055
The majority of the population in Bolivia are peasants. Some are even worse-off than the miners and their families. There is no home ownership for miners. The company that owns the mines, own houses for the miners to live in. Vacancies for these houses are very rare so the company has to rent rooms from the nearby towns for their workers. These homes are very small. The average size is 4 by 5 or 6 meters. The homes do not have any running water and no bathrooms. The people get the water from a water pump in the neighborhood and line up to get water. There are about 10 to 12 showers for the whole neighborhood and also about 10 toilets. The showers and toilets were not cleaned except once throughout the day and usually did not have running water.
The miners had terrible working conditions. There were three shifts. The first one began at 6 a.m. and lasted until 3 p.m., the second shift started at 2 p.m. and ended at 11 p.m., and then the third shift began at 10 p.m. and ended at 7 a.m. During their shifts, they stayed in the mine the whole time and was not allowed to have food brought down. The miners would have to go deep in to the mine where there was little air and there were gases. Explosives were used frequently making the job dangerous and caused many fatalities. The explosions also made it very dusty making vision poor and getting into the lungs of the miners. The average life expectancy of the miners was 35. They also had very low wages.
The wives had to adjust to their husbands shifts frequently. Domitila would wake up at 4 a.m. to make her husband breakfast and to start making food to sell later in the day. She would also have to get some of her children ready for school while the rest went with her to the mining companies supply store to buy meat, vegetables, and oils. There, she waited in line for a very long time and sold her food while she waited. She sold food because her husbands wages were not enough to support the family. Clothing and food were very expensive and totaled to more than a days wages. They would never buy already made clothes, instead Domitila would have to make clothes for her family. She would also have to wash clothes by hand because there was no running water.
Sources
Chungara, Domitila Barrios De, and Moema Viezzer. Let Me Speak!: Testimony of Domitila, a Woman of the Bolivian Mines. New York: Monthly Review, 1978. Print.