For more information contact:
Dawn Bratsch-Prince
Intern Associate Dean
Director, LAS International
213 Catt Hall
Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa 50011
515.294.1162
deprince@iastate.edu
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- Latin American Studies News
- John Nason - November 12, 2007
Latin
American Studies Certificate - November 27, 2006
LAS
International Service Awards - March 7, 2006
- Tres Vidas - September 21, 2005
Latin American
Film Festival - September 14, 2005
Center
for American Intercultural Studies - April 14, 2005
Trinidad
Study Abroad - February 21, 2005
Yucatan
Study Abroad - April 19, 2004
Steffen
Schmidt - March 22, 2004
Cynthia
Myers - January 26, 2004
Bolivia
Study Abroad - January 12, 2004
International
Area Studies Programs - November 17, 2003
James Raich - September 8, 2003
Ames Piano
Quartet to Cuba - March 10, 2003
Jerry Garcia - Janaury 21, 2002
Kathy
Leonard - Janaury 21, 2002
Steffen
Schmidt - September 9, 2002
Lynn Clark - October 30, 2000
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- Women in the mines
Unimaginable.
That's how Kathy Leonard, professor of Spanish and Hispanic linguistics in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and director of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences' Latin American Studies Program, describes the working conditions facing Bolivian miners.
"Men, as well as women, have worked, and continue to work, under the most precarious conditions," she said. "There is no safety equipment of any kind – no breathing apparatuses, no barricades to keep people from falling into pits 50 to 100 feet deep, no modern equipment, only picks and shovels. I have seen children as young as five years old working in the mines alongside their fathers."
Bolivian women who work in the mines, called "palliris" in the native language of Quechua, are typically widows of miners. They sit just outside the mine entrances 10-12 hours a day, breaking up rocks to extract any minerals left there. They sell what they have extracted, earning, if they are lucky, about $20 per month.
The lives of Bolivian miners have been well documented in Bolivia's realistic fiction, called "literatura minera," or "mining literature." The genre typically portrays the miners as a group oppressed by cruel Bolivian and foreign mining administrators.
Leonard, whose past research has focused on contemporary Bolivian women authors, first became aware of the women in the mines through this literature. Women included in these works are often portrayed as "stoic partners, passive yet supportive of their husbands or companions."
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