[OVERVIEW]
This is a case I've been obsessed with ever since I watched the movie about it. It's called In the Time of the Butterflies which is an extremely good movie and book based off The Mirabal Sisters. If you haven't watched it or read the book, you need to.
[SISTERS]
There were four sisters. The oldest was Patria Mercedes Mirabal Reyes. She was born in 1924.
The second born was Bélgica Adela Mirabal Reyes. She is best known as DeDe. She was born in 1925.
The third born was María Argentina Minerva Mirabal Reyes. She was born in 1926. She was allowed into law school but at graduation Rafael Trujillo denied her her diploma after she denied his sexual advances.
The fourth and youngest girl was Antonia María Teresa Mirabal Reyes who was born in 1935.
They were a family of farmers from the central Cibao region of the Dominican Republic. The sisters grew up in a middle-class environment, raised by their parents, Enrique Mirabal Fernández and Mercedes Reyes Camilo.
Now before I get to what they did and why they are so important, let me tell you about the man that all of them opposed.
[RAFAEL TRUJILLO]
Rafael Leónidas Trujillo Molina was born in 1891. was a Dominican politician, soldier and dictator, who ruled the Dominican Republic from February 1930 until his assassination in May 1961. He served as president from 1930 to 1938 and again from 1942 to 1952, ruling for the rest of the time as an unelected military strongman under figurehead presidents. His 31 years in power, to Dominicans known as the Trujillo Era are considered one of the bloodiest eras ever. Trujillo and his regime were responsible for many deaths, including between 20,000 and 30,000 Haitians in the infamous Parsley massacre.
In 1916, the United States occupied the Dominican Republic due to threats of defaulting on foreign debts. The occupying force soon established a Dominican army constabulary to impose order. Trujillo joined the National Guard in 1918 and trained with the U.S. Marines. Seeing opportunity, Trujillo impressed the recruiters and won promotion from cadet to general and commander-in-chief of the Army in only nine years.
A rebellion against President Horacio Vásquez broke out in February 1930 in Santiago. Trujillo secretly cut a deal with rebel leader Rafael Estrella Ureña; in return for Trujillo letting Estrella take power, Estrella would allow Trujillo to run for president in new elections. As the rebels marched toward Santo Domingo, Vásquez ordered Trujillo to suppress them. However, feigning "neutrality", Trujillo kept his men in barracks, allowing Estrella's rebels to take the capital virtually unopposed. On 3 March, Estrella was proclaimed acting president, with Trujillo confirmed as head of the police and of the army. As per their agreement, Trujillo became the presidential nominee of the Patriotic Coalition of Citizens. The other candidates became targets of harassment by the army. When it became apparent that the army would not allow anyone other than Trujillo to campaign unhindered, the other candidates pulled out. Ultimately, the Trujillo-Estrella ticket was proclaimed victorious with an implausible 99 percent of the vote. In a note to the State Department, American ambassador Charles Boyd Curtis wrote that Trujillo received far more votes than actual voters.
Three and a half weeks after Trujillo ascended to the Presidency the destructive Hurricane San Zenon hit Santo Domingo and left 2,000 dead. As a response to this disaster, Trujillo placed the Dominican Republic under martial law and began to rebuild the city. After the city was rebuilt he renamed the capital of the Dominican Republic Ciudad Trujillo (Trujillo City) in his honor and had streets, monuments, and landmarks to honor him throughout the country. On 16 August 1931, the first anniversary of his inauguration, Trujillo made the Dominican Party the nation's sole legal political party. However, the country had effectively become a one-party state with Trujillo's swearing-in. Government employees were required by law to "donate" 10 percent of their salaries to the national treasury, and there was strong pressure on adult citizens to join the party. Party members had to carry a membership card, nicknamed the "palmita" as the cover had a palm tree on it, and a person could be arrested for vagrancy without one. Those who did not join or contribute to the party did so at their own risk. Opponents of the régime were mysteriously killed. In 1934 Trujillo, who had promoted himself to Generalissimo of the army, was up for re-election. By this time, there was no organized opposition left in the country, and he was elected as the sole candidate on the ballot.
Brutal oppression of actual or perceived members of the opposition was the key feature of Trujillo's rule right from the beginning in 1930 when his gang, "The 42", under its leader Miguel Angel Paulino, drove through the streets in their red Packard "carro de la muerte" ("car of death"). Trujillo also maintained an execution list of people throughout the world who he felt were his direct enemies or whom he felt had wronged him. He did even at one point allow an opposition party to legally form and permitted them to operate openly. This was mainly so he could identify his opposition and arrest or kill them.
Trujillo was known for his open-door policy, accepting Jewish refugees from Europe, Japanese migration during the 1930s, and exiles from Spain following its civil war. He developed a uniquely Dominican policy of racial discrimination, Antihaitianismo ("anti-Haitianism"), targeting the mostly black inhabitants of his neighboring country and those within the Platano Curtain, including many Afro-Dominican citizens. At the 1938 Évian Conference the Dominican Republic was the only country willing to accept many Jews and offered to accept up to 100,000 refugees on generous terms. In 1940 an agreement was signed and Trujillo donated 26,000 acres of his properties for settlements. The first settlers arrived in May 1940; eventually, some 800 settlers came to Sosua and most moved later on to the United States. Refugees from Europe broadened the Dominican Republic's tax base and added more whites to the predominantly mixed-race nation. The government favored white refugees over others while Dominican troops expelled illegal aliens, resulting in the 1937 Parsley Massacre of Haitian immigrants.
Now that you know a little about him, let's move on to the sisters again.
[SISTERS PART 2]
Minerva became involved in politics, largely influenced by her uncle. Her uncle hated Trujillo, as did she. Maria Teresa followed soon after she spent the night with her sister and saw the work she had been doing. Patria followed her sisters footsteps after she witnessed a massacre at the hands of Trujillo's men. DeDe did not join mostly because her husband did not want her to, but they too did oppose his rule as well.
Minerva, María Teresa, and Patria formed a group called the Movement of the Fourteenth of June, named after the date of the massacre Patria witnessed, to oppose the Trujillo regime. They distributed pamphlets about the many people whom Trujillo had killed, and obtained materials for guns and bombs to use when they eventually openly revolted. Within the group, the sisters called themselves "Las Mariposas" ("The Butterflies"), after Minerva's underground name.
Minerva and María Teresa were incarcerated but were not tortured thanks to mounting international opposition to Trujillo's regime. Their and Patria's husbands, who were also involved in the underground activities, were incarcerated at La Victoria Penitentiary in Santo Domingo.
In 1960, the Organization of American States condemned Trujillo's actions and sent observers. Minerva and María Teresa were freed, but their husbands remained in prison. On a remembrance website, Learn to Question, the author writes, "No matter how many times Trujillo jailed them, no matter how much of their property and possessions he seized, Minerva, Patria and María Teresa refused to give up on their mission to restore democracy and civil liberties to the island nation."
Patria had said "We cannot allow our children to grow up in this corrupt and tyrannical regime. We have to fight against it, and I am willing to give up everything, even my life if necessary."
Minerva said "It is a source of happiness to do whatever can be done for our country that suffers so many anguishes. It is sad to stay with one's arms crossed."
Maria Teresa said "Perhaps what we have most near is death, but that idea does not frighten me. We shall continue to fight for that which is just."
[ASSASSINATION]
On 25 November 1960, Patria, Minerva, María Teresa, and their driver, Rufino de la Cruz, were visiting María Teresa and Minerva's incarcerated husbands. On the way home, they were stopped by Trujillo's henchmen. The sisters and de la Cruz were separated, strangled and clubbed to death. The bodies were then gathered and put in their Jeep, which was run off the mountain road in an attempt to make their deaths look like an accident.
After Trujillo was assassinated in May 1961, General Pupo Román admitted to having personal knowledge that the sisters were killed by Victor Alicinio Peña Rivera, Trujillo's right-hand man, along with Ciriaco de la Rosa, Ramon Emilio Rojas, Alfonso Cruz Valeria, and Emilio Estrada Malleta, members of his secret police force. As to whether Trujillo ordered the killings or whether the secret police acted on its own, Chevalier wrote, "We know orders of this nature could not come from any authority lower than national sovereignty. That was none other than Trujillo himself; still less could it have taken place without his assent." Also, one of the murderers, Ciriaco de la Rosa, said "I tried to prevent the disaster, but I could not because if I had he, Trujillo, would have killed us all...."
[TRUJILLOS ASSASSINATION]
On Tuesday, 30 May 1961, Trujillo was shot and killed when his blue 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air was ambushed on a road outside the Dominican capital.
Johnny Abbes, Roberto Figueroa Carrión, and the Trujillo family put the SIM to work to hunt the members of the plot and brought back Ramfis Trujillo from Paris to step into his father's shoes. The response by SIM was swift and brutal. Hundreds of suspects were detained, many tortured. On 18 November the last executions took place when six of the conspirators were executed in the "Hacienda María Massacre".
Only one of the assassinators managed to escape and live. A co-conspirator also lived.
Many believe that the American CIA plotted his death as the weapons used to ambush Trujillo did come from the CIA. However the CIA deny that they killed him and the one who lived said they [his group] and they alone came up with the assassination plot. However this contradicts future findings.
Cord Meyer was a CIA official responsible for manipulating international groups. He used the contacts with Bosch, Volman, and Figueres for a new purpose - as the United States moved to rally the hemisphere against Cuba's Fidel Castro, Trujillo had become expendable. Dissidents inside the Dominican Republic argued that assassination was the only certain way to remove Trujillo.
According to Chester Bowles, the Undersecretary of State, internal Department of State discussions in 1961 on the topic were vigorous. Richard N. Goodwin, Assistant Special Counsel to the President, who had direct contacts with the rebel alliance, argued for intervention against Trujillo. Quoting Bowles directly: The next morning I learned that in spite of the clear decision against having the dissident group request our assistance Dick Goodwin following the meeting sent a cable to CIA people in the Dominican Republic without checking with State or CIA; indeed, with the protest of the Department of State. The cable directed the CIA people in the Dominican Republic to get this request at any cost. When Allen Dulles found this out the next morning, he withdrew the order. We later discovered it had already been carried out.
An internal CIA memorandum states that a 1973 Office of Inspector General investigation into the murder disclosed "quite extensive Agency involvement with the plotters." The CIA described its role in "changing" the government of the Dominican Republic "as a 'success' in that it assisted in moving the Dominican Republic from a totalitarian dictatorship to a Western-style democracy."
[AFTERMATH]
According to historian Bernard Diederich, the sisters' assassinations "had greater effect on Dominicans than most of Trujillo's other crimes". The killings, he wrote, "did something to their machismo" and paved the way for Trujillo's own assassination six months later.
However, the details of the Mirabal sisters' assassinations were "treated gingerly at the official level" until 1996, when President Joaquín Balaguer was forced to step down after more than two decades in power. Balaguer was Trujillo's protégé and had been the president at the time of the assassinations in 1960 (though, at the time, he "distanced himself from General Trujillo and initially carved out a more moderate political stance").
A review of the history curriculum in public schools in 1997 recognized the Mirabals as national martyrs. The post-Balaguer era has seen a marked increase in homages to the Mirabal sisters, including an exhibition of their belongings at the National Museum of History and Geography in Santo Domingo and the transformation of Trujillo's obelisk into a mural dedicated in their honor.
After the assassinations, the surviving sister, Dedé, devoted her life to the legacy of her sisters. She raised their six children as well as her own three.
Minerva's daughter, has served as deputy for the National District in the lower house of the Dominican Congress since 2002 and was deputy foreign minister before that. In 1992, Dedé created the Mirabal Sisters Foundation, and in 1994, she opened the Mirabal Sisters Museum in the sisters' hometown, Salcedo. She published a book, Vivas en su Jardín, on 25 August 2009. She lived in the house in Salcedo where the sisters were born until her death in 2014, aged 88.
[LEGACY]
On 17 December 1999, the United Nations General Assembly designated 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in honor of the sisters. It marks the beginning of a 16-day period of Activism against Gender Violence. The last day of that period, 10 December, is International Human Rights Day.
On 21 November 2007, Salcedo Province was renamed Hermanas Mirabal Province.
The 200 Dominican pesos bill features the sisters, and a stamp was issued in their memory.
The 137-foot obelisk that Trujillo built in 1935 to commemorate the renaming of the capital city from Santo Domingo to Ciudad Trujillo has been covered with murals honoring the sisters.
In 2019, the southeast corner of 168th street and Amsterdam Avenue in Washington Heights, Manhattan was designated "Mirabal Sisters Way" by the Council of the City of New York.
Being globally recognized as a symbol of social justice and feminism, the sisters have inspired the creation of many organizations that focus on keeping their legacy alive through social actions. An example of one of these organizations is the Mirabal Sisters Cultural and Community Center, a non-profit organization that seeks to improve the status of immigrant families.