#!/bin/perl -w 
use strict;
use Text::Iconv;
use XML::Simple;

my $converter= Text::Iconv->new("utf8", "ISO-8859-1") 
  or die "cannot generate the converter";

# note that if you want the text with XML::Parser
# Objects style you will need to get
# $doc->[0]->{Kids}->[0]->{Text}
my $doc= XMLin( \*DATA);

my $latin1_text= $converter->convert(  $doc);
print "text: $latin1_text (was $doc)\n";

__DATA__
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<doc>espaņol</doc>