Patria, Minerva and María Teresa Mirabal were murdered by the dictatorship of Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic; in their memory, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is commemorated.
Taken from Gaceta UNAM
The First Latin American and Caribbean Feminist Meeting held in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1981 made the decision to establish November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in honor of Patria, Minerva and María Teresa Mirabal, three sisters born in the Dominican Republic who were murdered by the military regime that controlled the island between 1930 and 1961.
The three women were born in Ojo de Agua, a small town in the province of Salcedo. They were the daughters of Mercedes Reyes Camilo and landowner Enrique Mirabal, who had four daughters in total (Bélgica Adela was not imprisoned by the dictatorship and outlived her sisters). From a young age, the Mirabal sisters demonstrated prodigious intelligence; however, Minerva stood out from the others thanks to her sharp mind, love of the arts, and beauty.
The family's fate changed in 1949 when they were invited to a reception in honor of General Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. It was during the evening that the second sister's beauty caught the dictator's eye, and he began to court her, without much success, inviting the young woman to a couple more ceremonies.
Trujillo continued his advances, which were rejected by the young woman, who, in addition to snubbing him, took the initiative to demand that the ruler end the judicial harassment against Pericles Franco, one of the founders of the Popular Socialist Party, imprisoned on several occasions and a close friend of Minerva.
When the young woman refused, Trujillo ordered the family to be closely watched and had her father arrested. Soon Minerva and several of her friends ended up behind bars as well, but were released after a few weeks. Enrique Mirabal, on the other hand, was arrested and released several times in the following years, until he fell ill and died in December 1953.
Minerva married Manolo Tavares, a law student opposed to the regime, in 1955. The social uprisings that swept through Latin America in the late 1950s, especially the revolt against Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, led to the creation of a movement against the Trujillo dictatorship on the island. This movement was called the June 14th Group—named after an armed expedition from Cuba that arrived in the Dominican Republic on that date. Tavares was its first president, and the sisters played a key role in the dissident movement; they were known as "Las Mariposas" (The Butterflies).
The oppressive government led by Trujillo quickly arrested everyone involved in the creation of the June 14th Movement. More than a hundred people were tortured, and several lost their lives. The presence of several members of the island's wealthiest families among the prisoners increased social pressure on the Trujillo regime. As a result, many were released, although government surveillance and police harassment continued in their daily lives. Manolo Tavares and other members of the movement remained behind bars.
Minerva, María Teresa, and Patria were captured as they returned home from visiting their partners in the Puerto Plata prison. Intercepted by a group of agents, they were brutally beaten, executed, and their bodies thrown into a ravine inside the jeep in which they were ambushed.
The assassination of the Mirabal sisters shocked Dominican society. Trujillo sought to silence the rebels with the execution, but the young women's deaths only increased the pressure against his government. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo was ambushed on Tuesday, May 30, 1961, by a group of dissidents.
