On November 25 (25N) The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is commemorated throughout the world. The origin of the date has its roots in the political femicide of the sisters Patria, Minerva and María Teresa Mirabalby the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, in the Dominican Republic, in 1960.
They were murdered when they came from a visit to the prison. Minerva and Maria Teresa They had been imprisoned, but the dictatorship freed them in order to kill them. Patria accompanied them to protect them. They could not resist so much violence, but violence could not bury their example of bravery.
The regime wanted to simulate his crime as a traffic accident and this is how it was reported in the newspaper The Caribbean. The Military Intelligence Service of the Dominican Republic He sent fifteen agents with sticks to take their lives. And then he threw the car over a ravine to pretend that the jeep in which they were traveling had lost direction. But history did justice and is still valid.
He was also murdered Rufino de la Cruz who was driving the car and was a victim of murderous persecution. They died on November 25, 1960. But their death did not free Trujillo from his rebellion, it condemned him to his nightmare. The triple femicide was considered the beginning of the end of authoritarianism. On May 30, 1961 Trujillo was assassinated.
“The Mirabal sisters should be an invitation to remember that gender violence is mixed with political and structural violence and not allow them to be emptied of content,” stressed Minerva’s granddaughter, Camila Minerva Rodríguezduring an interview during a visit to the Evita Museum in the City of Buenos Aires.
From the Evita Museum there is a bridge extended to the Mirabal Sisters House Museum, which has been in operation since December 8, 1994, thanks to the work of Belgium Adela Mirabal Reyes, Dedé (the surviving sister who died on February 1, 2014) in the original family home.
The home was built in 1954 and was always cared for and preserved by their mother, Mercedes Reyes, Chea, who died in 1981. Since November 25, 2000, the three sisters have been buried in the garden.
The date first became a Latin American and, later, a global milestone. At the First Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Meetingheld in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1981, it was approved that 25N be the date on which sexist violence is condemned throughout the region.
From Latin America to the world, the crime of the Mirabal sisters was reflected in an alert about the murders of women, trans people, young people and girls. On December 17, 1999, the UN decreed 25N an emblematic date to defend life against gender violence.
Femicide is the worst form of violence, but there is also mistreatment, harassment, sexual abuse and other forms of machismo. In the case of Minerva Mirabal, first, she was harassed by Trujillo and, since she rejected him, the tyrant imprisoned her. In prison she suffered rape and torture.
The dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo (the Goat) It was one of the longest (it lasted from 1930 to 1961, when he was assassinated), unpunished and bloody in Latin America and the Caribbean. Butterflies are not a name assigned by poetics, which turns those who gave their lives into heroines, but rather it was the alias to fight against the dictatorship without being deciphered.
Therefore, it is a perception of your own flight and pride. And the nickname appeared to name Minerva, with the same initial but another poetic assignment. Furthermore, during the persecution and in prison, the confinement suffocated them and the butterflies They managed to escape from bars with their secret identities.
The sisters were born in Ojo de Agua, in the Dominican Republic. They grew up in a well-to-do family, with gifts of dolls for Christmas and bicycles to ride, but with the mandate to embroider, sew and learn housework.
His father, Enrique, would have wanted a son so that he could know how to trade coffee. But they marked history not only by their death, but by decide to live a life free of ties.
An impressive example of love and conviction is that Minerva, still imprisoned, clandestinely sent love letters to her partner Manolo Tavárez. The correspondence is edited in the book “Tomorrow I will write to you again”, with 117 notes, letters and telegrams, written from 1954 to 1960.
The work on the compilation was done by Minou, the couple’s daughter and a philologist, activist and politician in the Dominican Republic. “Pain and sacrifice have magnified love,” Manolo inspired her and Minerva reciprocated: “Remember, they can separate our bodies but not our spirits.”
The Mirabal sisters are known as “The Butterflies.” “Dedé” is the sister who survives them and tells the story that is now told as a universal milestone. She was always asked the most painful whip for those who live while others die. Why didn’t they kill her? They questioned her again and again. And the answer was clear: “To tell the story.”
The book that brings the case to readers around the world is “In the time of butterflies”, by Julia Álvarezwho had to go into exile, at the age of 10, from the Dominican Republic to the United States due to the persecution of his parents. She told the intimate, familial and political history of the butterflies.
On the day of his funeral, people threw flowers all over the road. to the cemetery and no one believed the official version. The story, in this case, was told so that the truth would not be buried along with their bodies. The story was translated into thirty languages and was made into a film.
In Argentina there is a fundamental piece in the staging of the historical story. The Argentine playwright Jimena Coppolino He wrote a play about the life of the Mirabals titled “November 25 or the behavior of butterflies”, published, in 2021, by La Mariposa y La Iguana.
“Now my name is a scream; my surname, a flag,” Minerva says in her work. From books to platforms, Mirabal are not forgotten. His life came to Disney with “The Scream of the Butterflies”, starring Susana Abaitua, Sandy Hernández and Belén Rueda.
The thirteen chapters, focused on the life of Minerva Mirabalpremiered on March 8, 2023. In the series, Trujillo puts his hand on her buttocks during a dance, while he, in a disgusting tone, asks her: “What does the future lawyer think of her president?”
She had the audacity to study and the dream of having an office to defend those in need. He cut her off for resisting being touched. Today women around the world know that they have the right not to have anyone touch them or have their lives taken from them. The Mirabals continue to illuminate history and the future.
