wfn.org | UMNS# 045-Methodist activist joins cabinet of new government in

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Methodist activist joins cabinet of new government in Bolivia

Jan. 25, 2006

NOTE: A photograph is available at http://umns.umc.org.

By United Methodist News Service

The recipient of the 2003 World Methodist Peace Award has been named
minister of justice for the new government of Bolivia.

Casimira Rodriguez Romero has become part of the cabinet of President
Evo Morales, who was inaugurated Jan. 22 in La Paz. She attends Emmanuel
Methodist Church in Cochabamba.

Rodriguez is chief executive of the National Federation of Household
Workers, a union that successfully lobbied the Bolivian Parliament to
pass the Household Workers Law in 2003. Since 2001, she also has headed
the Confederation of Household Workers of Latin America and the
Caribbean.

Even as a teenager, she was an active advocate of workers' rights. The
union struggled for 12 years to get the Household Workers Law passed. Of
the 132,000 household workers in Bolivia, 99 percent are women.

Morales, an Aymara Indian, is leading the first indigenous
administration in Bolivia's history. His cabinet also includes David
Choquehuanca Cespedes, an Aymara named as foreign minister. Rodriguez is
a Quechua Indian.

The Rev. Gustavo Loza, a Methodist pastor and mentor to Rodriguez, wrote
about the optimism that has resulted from the election of Morales in a
reflection titled, "Winds of Hope Among the Bolivian People."

He noted that past governments have spoken about hope "while they
continued to fill their coffers with the suffering and pain of this
people, and the sale of natural resources, a blessing of God, changing
hope into desperation.

"Today we feel very differently because this wind of hope blows with
vigor, surging through our bodies, spirits and our communities. We want
to say that we feel so very good.

"This hope is being manifested in our lives in a passion for achieving
what we now believe is possible, because we believe in the God of
promise who renews our lives through a living hope," he wrote.

Rodriguez is scheduled to speak May 6 during the May 4-7 United
Methodist Women's Assembly in Anaheim, Calif.

News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

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United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org