Discovering, then immersing oneself in a compelling, engaging story is one of the incomparable joys of reading. For me, this often leads to further exploring the “back story” or on to a path that expands the original content beyond its face value. After recently finishing Julia Alvarez’s novel, How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents (1991), I sought out some of the historical facts serving as the story’s springboard. This led to uncovering several other notable, yet largely unheard of, Dominican women who deserve a place in global women’s history.
Garcia Girls is primarily told through its female characters, specifically the four sisters of the Garcia family. The novel relates the family’s comfortable lifestyle in the Dominican Republic, their subsequent urgent escape from their island home, driven by their father’s involvement in overthrowing the dictator Rafael Trujillo, and their lives as immigrants in the United States. The novel highlights their struggles in acclimating to a new environment and culture, and sheds light on the difficulties of dealing with the twin brutalities of dictatorship and patriarchy of the late 1950s, early 1960s.
Fast forward to 2023, and today we’re still encountering the suppression of women’s lives in patriarchal societies and repressive regimes, where for many women and girls this often means denial of education and other privileges afforded to men. Dictators, drunk on power, feel entitled to add their own brand of abuse concerning the female population, with scores of women enduring horrific physical injustices. This was certainly the case with Trujillo, who encouraged degradation of women. Women who resisted, or became political activists, incurred terrible fates, including murder. The Mirabal sisters are among those women who ultimately sacrificed their lives in the fight against the Trujillo regime. Alvarez’s novel piqued my curiosity, and in reading up on the Mirabals, I was introduced to other women activists of Dominican descent who are worthy of recognition.
Resistance During the Trujillo Years
The Mirabal sisters, Patria (b. 1924), Minerva (b. 1927), and Maria Teresa (b. 1936), became activists after being targeted by Trujillo’s “affections.” Trujillo’s penchant for deploying his henchmen to scour the countryside to bring back young girls for his pleasure was one of his more monstrous traits. The Mirabal family was financially comfortable (a parallel to the fictional Garcias). Scorned by Minerva, Trujillo focused his wraith on her family, consequentially diminishing the family’s wealth and status.
The three sisters (a fourth sister, Dedé, was not politically active) were collectively known by the codename, Las Mariposas (The Butterflies) when they joined the anti-Trujillo movement. For taking part in an underground plot to overthrow the regime, the Mirabal sisters were murdered in 1960. In the Time of the Butterflies is Alvarez’s work of historical fiction based on the sisters’ lives. In 1999, to honor the Mirabals, the United Nations General Assembly designated November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. The sisters later became icons for Dominican women and for the Dominican Republic as a whole.
Others Who Answered the Call
While the Mirabals may be among the more well-known women to oppose political turmoil in their homeland, they had company. Yolanda Guzmán (1943 – 1965), a young woman of Afro-Dominican descent was another martyr in the fight for social justice in the Dominican Republic. She actively participated in the April Revolution, the fight against the 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic by the U.S. Like the Mirabal sisters, Guzmán was assassinated for her efforts in the struggle for independence.
Aniana Ondina Vargas Jáquez (1930 – 2002), an anti-trujillista and staunch environmentalist, lived for a time in exile in the U.S. She returned to the Dominican Republic in 1965 to fight in the civil war there, and afterward, founded the Federation of Peasants towards Progress to establish preservation of the Yuna and Blanco river basins. Known as “Mother of the Waters,” Vargas Jáquez continued her fight for the environment in 1989 against the Falconridge Dominicana Mining Company. At the newspaper El Nacional, she contributed an ongoing column about environmental defense and the rights of peasants.
Minerva Bernardino (1907 – 1998) lived much of her long life as a dedicated champion of women’s and children’s rights. In Latin America, she was also known for her ceaseless opposition to tyrants, at one point going into self-imposed exile to proclaim her resistance to Trujillo’s dictatorship. She is remembered for her international work as well, and for her part in founding the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. In “Open Letter to the Women of the World,” which Eleanor Roosevelt read at the 1946 United Nations General Assembly, Bernardino encouraged women to take a more active role in politics.
Born in the Dominican province of El Seibo, Bernardino was raised in an unusually liberal family, where education was encouraged. In The New York Times article after her death, her quote in an interview in the Christian Science Monitor was included, where she said, “My mother was very progressive and I was reared in an atmosphere that was, at that time, most unusual in my country.” After obtaining a Bachelor of Science degree, Bernardino began a career in civil service, and by 1929, was active in the women’s rights movement in the Dominican Republic. She was a leader in Acción Feminista Dominicana, which led the fight for expanded rights in the 1942 Constitution.
Recognized as a pioneer and major force among Latin American feminists, Bernardino’s additional accomplishments were many. From 1944 to 1949, she was chair of the Inter-American Commission on Women and served as representative of the Dominican Republic at the United Nations in 1950.
Education and Environmental Champions
One of the most prominent poets of the 19th century, Salomé Ureña (1850 – 1898) began writing at age 15, publishing her first poem two years later. Introduced to French and Spanish writers by her father, Ureña was a strong advocate for education and grew up believing women should be given the same opportunities as men. She and her husband opened a school for women in the Dominican Republic, the Instituto de Señoritas, in 1881.
Though less known than Ureña, Aida Cartagena Portalatín (1918-1994) is an important feminist icon whose poetry and prose addressed themes of racism and imperialism, as well as feminism. A prolific wordsmith, Portalatín boldly wrote during Trujillo’s reign— a time when the arts, and especially, one’s expression of free thought—could result in tragic consequences.
Florinda Muñoz Soriano (1921 -1974), aka Mamá Tingó, became a well-respected activist for the Dominican Republic’s rural and farming communities. In the 1970s, Mamá Tingó, a member of Liga Agraria Cristiana, fought for her community against Pablo Díaz Hernández, a landowner who wrongly claimed ownership of the lands some farmers occupied for centuries. Mamá Tingó, in her 50s at the time, opposed him and as a result, spent some time in jail. In November 1974, she waited to face Hernández in court, but he never showed. Upon arriving home, she was killed by one of Hernández’s workers.
Contemporary Trailblazers
Today, Dominican women continue to make their mark concerning the advancement of women in areas of government, economics, and journalism. Nuria Piera (b. 1960), the daughter of the late journalist Enrique Piera, is a recognized investigative journalist. One of her biggest exposés was uncovering a Dominican mafia organization selling expired medications. Despite receiving death threats over her 28-year career, Piera remains passionate about her work.
Frustration over the tourism industry in the Dominican Republic led the activist Mechi Annaís Estévez Cruz to establish Una Vaina Bien Spanish for the promotion of socially responsible travel on the island. Estévez Cruz, an Afro-Indigenous Queer teacher, writer, and cultural guide, started the organization in response to what they believe are the negative impacts of tourism in their homeland. Estévez Cruz says Dominicans are essentially “erased in their own homeland”—denied access to their beaches and restaurants, displaced from land for the building of cruise ship ports, and “tucked out of view to make way for tourism.”
Margarita María Cedeño (b. 1965) is the Dominican Republic’s former Vice President (serving from 2012 – 2020). Previously, she was First Lady when her husband, Leonel Fernández, was President from 1996 to 2000, and again in 2004 to 2012. As First Lady, Cedeño implemented national programs aimed at reducing poverty and aiding human development. Throughout her political career, Cedeño has championed women’s rights, convinced that, “where there are women empowered, societies progress.” Cedeño’s successor, current Vice President Raquel Peña (b. 1966), is similarly an advocate for women’s issues and a defender of education as a means toward social and economic improvements.
Closer to home, Diana Reyna (b. 1973), made history in 2001 as the first woman of Dominican descent to be elected to office in New York State, serving on the New York City Council until 2013. From 2014 to 2017, Reyna held office as Deputy Borough President for Brooklyn until early 2018 when she launched the Athena Consulting Group, an all-women business concerned with community engagement, business development, government, and public relations, with a focus on minority- and women-owned businesses.
Exiting the Shadows
The harsh treatment of much of the population under Trujillo’s dictatorship led many Dominicans to flee their country. Dominican women not only suffered under this political regime but were also oppressed by the dominance of male-centric institutions widely prevalent in many cultures, especially prior to the uprisings of the late 1960s and 1970s. Many responded by becoming politically active, despite the threat to their lives and the lives of their loved ones. It’s encouraging, and humbling, to become acquainted with so many unsung heroines fighting for a variety of rights throughout history—a history worth knowing, especially since we still have much work to do.
Sources:
Crossette, Barbara. “Minerva Bernadino, 91, Dominican Feminist.” The New York Times, 04 September 1998. http://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/04/world/minerva-bernardino-91-dominican-feminist.html
Derby, Lauren H. The Dictator’s Seduction: Politics and the Popular Imagination in the Era of Trujillo. Duke University Press Books. July 2009.
Simón, Yara. Herstory: “10 Dominican Women to Celebrate During Women’s History Month.” Remezcla.com, 07 March 2016. http://remezcla.com/lists/culture/herstory-10-dominican-women-to-celebrate/
Photo credit: Barnaby David, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons