Casimira Rodríguez

In June 2015, she was appointed Departmental Secretary for Human Development of the Autonomous Departmental Government of Cochabamba.

Casimira Rodríguez (born 1966) was the Bolivian Justice Minister from February 2006 until January 23, 2007. She is a former leader in the Domestic Workers' Union, which she helped found. Rodríguez was Bolivia's first indigenous Quechua woman to serve as a government minister.

In 2007 Rodríguez was elected to the Ashoka Fellowship for her work in "...breaking the pattern of exploitation, trafficking, and discrimination suffered by more than 150,000 Bolivian domestic workers". She has been outspoken about the lack of rights for undocumented domestic workers in the USA.

In February 2006 Rodríguez became Bolivia's new Minister of Justice. She was replaced in a cabinet change in January 2007. She was the first indigenous Quechua woman to serve as a government minister. During her ministry one focus was to elevate the role of "indigenous justice" (also known as "community justice") to a higher level.

The World Methodist Peace Prize was awarded to Rodríguez in 2003 recognising her "courage, creativity and perseverance in the fight for the labor and legal rights of domestic workers in Bolivia".

When she was 21 she became involved with the group which would become the Domestic Workers’ Union of Cochabamba. This led to become a founding member of the Domestic Workers Federation in 1985; it also led to her later election as the leader of the National Federation of Domestic Workers in Bolivia. She was instrumental in the creation and passage of the Domestic Workers’ Protection Law, which Congress approved in 2003.