At the age of 13 she was taken—essentially kidnapped—from her rural village in Mizque and brought to the city of Cochabamba to work, with the promise that she would be given in return the schooling and care her campesino parents could not provide.
[1] Instead, her supposed employers held Rodríguez in abusive servitude for two years, forcing her to work long hours with no pay.
[2] She was instrumental in the creation and passage of the Domestic Workers’ Protection Law, which Congress approved in 2003.
[7] 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".
[8] 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".