Today marks another year since those heroic Quisqueyanas were murdered.

Is the Sisters' assassination being hijacked?

I don't object to the international recognition of these heroic martyrs; But, the political repression that existed during the Trujillo's regime has been overshadowed by the Sister's gender and violence against women.
Everyone back then was a victim of repression, women, children, and men.
To just focus on women during that period is simplistic. Murdering the Mirabal Sisters did tip the scales; it was the last straw. After this crime Quisqueya's political condition was revealed to the whole world which eventually lead to Trujillo's assassination.
However, we can't separate one aspect of the regime's crime from the whole 31 years. We can not lose sight of all the people that died in La Cuarenta, in the invasions of Maimon y Estero Hondo; Also the hundreds of anonymous victims of the ruthless regime, and the many men of well to do families who openly resisted the tyranny and were apprehended, then violently murdered.

How can the Mirabal sisters only be remembered as women who were victims of violence?

They stood and died for more than just women's rights? The were victims of Trujillo's regime.
Las Mirabal Sisters gave a female face to the struggle; But, they were brave patrios besides being female.

This trend is divisive and promoting a different goal...


Here's a recent article from South Africa on what I am referring to:


Women’s bodies are a terrain of struggle
November 21 2011 at 03:03pm
By Nomboniso Gasa


SPECIAL FORCES: A woman fires an AK-47 rifle after hearing that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafis forces have withdrawn from Benghazi. Women in conflict zones continue to be raped and murdered. Picture: Reuters

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In 1981, the Feminist Encuentro, held in Bogota, Colombia, in July, decided to mark November 25 as the day of no violence against women in honour of the Mirabal sisters – Minerva, Patricia Mercedes and Antonia Maria Teresa.

In 1960 the Dominican Republic sisters were the victims of a violent assassination by the Rafael Trujillo dictatorship, whose reign of terror lasted 31 years, from 1930 to 1961.

All four Mirabal sisters were very active in the resistance against Trujillo’s dictatorship. Several imprisonments as well as torture did not deter the strong-willed sisters from their resistance work.

In the end, three of the sisters were killed.

Belgica Adela “Dede” Mirabal survived and continues to tell the story of her sisters’ resistance, their assassination and the fate that befell all those who opposed Trujillo.


POLITICS of the flesh: Visual activist and photographer, Zanele Muholis Difficult Love presents a lively personal take on the challenges facing black lesbians in South Africa today. Womens bodies continue to be battlefields everywhere we look.

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That this day has become part of the international calendar of the UN, nation states and many in the women’s and social movements is befitting tribute to the tenacity and commitment of the feminist activists of Latin America and the Caribbean.


It was that single-minded commitment to justice and to not forgetting which made it possible for these women and their allies to take this proposal to the Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing 1995, followed by the adoption of the day by the UN General Assembly in 1999.

The proposal resonated, with tens of thousands of women gathering in Beijing. Many of us carried similar baggage from our own histories. We, too, irrespective of the different circumstances and details, had our own versions of the terror that had been visited upon our people.

For South Africans the memory of Victoria Mxenge and many others was still fresh. Mxenge was brutally killed because, together with her husband Griffiths, who suffered the same fate, they dared to fight for justice.

Like Minerva Mirabal, Victoria Mxenge was, among other things, an attorney. She was articled in 1981, the same year the Latin American and Caribbean feminists decided to declare November 25 the day of violence against women.

But, Minerva Mirabal qualified as a lawyer 20 years before Mxenge could practise – and this contributed in no small measure to her death.

Mirabal had the misfortune of attracting unwanted romantic interest from Trujillo. She did not return these feelings.

So Trujillo ordered that she should not be issued a licence. She was not allowed to practise law.

In the mind of the dictator, if the woman did not want his advances, she had no professional future in the country he perceived as his own playground and property.

Nothing new there, many will say. In every corner of the globe, those who hold power believe they are entitled to get what they want. Should they be denied it, they will take it by force or even destroy it, including human life and great talent, because they can. They have the power to do so. As Eduardo Galeano, the Uruguayan writer, so eloquently put it, “the crime of power is the mother of all crimes”.

The story of the Mirabal sisters, shocking and vile as it was, is familiar to many women across the globe. It is a story with which many women and men in the world can easily identify, because, although the details may be different, the core is the same.

Fifty-one years later, these methods have not completely disappeared from our global political landscape.

Read more: http://www.iol.co.za/sundayindependent/women-s-bodies-are-a-terrain-of-struggle-1.1183016

Somos Todos
25FridayNov 2011


Posted by expatFAQsDR in BLOG



Today is International Day against Violence against Women and the 51st anniversary of the murder of Dominican national heroines the Mirabal Sisters, Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa, by order of then-dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1960.

Although the decision to commemorate this crime of political violence by declaring it a day against domestic violence doesn’t make absolute sense, there is an alarming rate of domestic violence and feminicide in the DR and as much as possible needs to be done to address this, including raising awareness. Around 200 women are killed by their partners or ex-partners every year, one of the highest rates in Latin America and the world.

Here is a short film on the subject by Francisco Montás, starring his niece Sofía and sister Angela, made for the Mirabal Sisters a Minute and a Half Film Festival.

http://youtu.be/30zu4wpgj6M


http://expatfaqsdr.wordpress.com/2011/11/25/somos-todos/