April 22, 2006

Former maid new justice minister

by Fiona Smith
LA PAZ, Bolivia
At age 13, Casimira Rodriguez left her hardscrabble rural home, hoping to escape poverty by taking a job as a housemaid in the city.

What she got instead was a nightmare of virtual slavery, and a first-hand view of the injustice many poor Bolivians experience.

Barely an adolescent herself, Rodriguez cooked, cleaned and looked after the children for an extended family of 14 people. She was not paid and was allowed out only to buy groceries down the street, she says.

After two years, Rodriguez escaped and brought her case for wages owed before a rural court. The judge asked her to be patient. A quarter century later, she's still waiting.

It's possible Rodriguez, 40, might finally get some satisfaction.

She is Bolivia's new justice minister, intent on overhauling one of Latin America's most overburdened, corrupt and inefficient judicial systems.

The former domestic workers' union leader and Quechua Indian has no law degree or legal training. She would be a striking figure in any government: She wears layers of velvet skirts under fitted cotton blouses and has her hair in traditional Indian braids.

Nearly three months after taking office, she has yet to offer a plan for overhauling Bolivia's judiciary.

Her detractors say she lacks the necessary experience — a maid for 18 years, she earned a high-school degree at night and has studied anthropology in college while running the union. The National Association of Bolivian Lawyers, which represents Bolivia's 30,000 attorneys, has demanded her resignation.

Evo Morales, the left-leaning president who appointed her, says he has no intention of letting that happen.

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Rodriguez is unfazed. She says she hopes to humanize and build trust in the judiciary while strengthening traditional Indian justice systems that depend on community elders rather than courts.

"I know the laws and all their articles, but life has forced us to also live injustice and we can feel the pain and thirst for justice of every Bolivian sister and brother," Rodriguez said.

Bolivian police regularly demand bribes from crime victims before pursuing their cases. The country's criminal courts refuse to hear 96 percent of the cases that come before them, and those that do go forward often end up delayed to the point that the courts lose their credibility, the Washington-based nonprofit Partners of the Americas said in a 2005 study.

A full 64 percent of Bolivians have little or no faith in their justice system, according to a February survey by the Apoyo Opinión y Mercado firm, which says the figure was as high as 84 percent just two years ago.

That indicates some faith that Morales, who named Rodriguez to the justice post, may improve matters.

But it is a daunting task.

For one, a jury system introduced in the last decade isn't working very well.

"The vast majority of [legal] conflicts don't reach the system," said Cristian Riego, academic director of the OAS's Justice Center of the Americas. Those who suffer most are indigenous people and workers in the informal economy.

Rodriguez says she'll fight to boost spending for the judiciary and make it work for the poor, who account for more than 60 percent of Bolivians.

She also wants greater respect for traditional Indian justice systems, still used in much of the country, where community elders hear cases and decide on sentences that can include corporal punishment.

"Community justice is so different from the ordinary justice system," said Rodriguez, "because you don't spend money and even though it's not legally recognized, it resolves cases in hours, or at the most in a week and doesn't add to the quarrel. It's more fraternal."

Such pronouncements have fueled calls for Rodriguez to step down.

"We don't believe she's the appropriate person to make serious policy," said Jaime Hurtado, vice president of the National Association of Bolivian Lawyers. He contends Rodriguez has no idea how to manage a modern judicial system.

Such attacks are unfair and often racially motivated, says Diana Urioste, secretary of the nonprofit Women's Coordination, an umbrella group of women's rights organizations in Bolivia.

"She's a person of high integrity," Urioste said of Rodriguez. "She's humble but has clear ideas, and people need the chance to show what they're really capable of."

Rodriguez, who is single and has no children, lives in a poor part of the city in a room in the local office of Bolivia's National Federation of Domestic Workers, which she spent years building up. She remains president of the federation of Domestic Workers of Latin America and the Caribbean.

She said that although she has heard the family she worked for continues to recruit young women from poor villages, she has no intention of going after them specifically. Instead, she said, she wants to address the general problem of poor Indians being victimized by the wealthy elite.

Rodriguez acknowledges her lack of legal experience but defends Morales' decision to name her justice minister, part of the president's pledge to bring more diversity to government.

Until Morales' election, the country's politics were dominated by Bolivia's European-descended elite.

"This is recognizing a sector that has been passed over, disdained," Rodriguez said. "I think it was hard to name a traditional Indian woman, a domestic worker, and it's offended some, but many people have celebrated. Flowers are still arriving at my office."

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