Slivers of glass, twigs, and dirt remain caught in the braided length of hair that rests in memorial today in a small home in the Dominican Republic – the hair, cut lovingly by a woman from the head of her little sister, whose life was brutally cut short 46 years ago by order of a despicable tyrant.
And, as though tending to the body of a murdered sister were not enough for one woman to bear, there were her two other sisters to mourn and bury as well.
This is the terrible yet inspiring true story of Dedé Mirabal, whose three sisters Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa gave their lives—at ages 36, 34, and 25—in the struggle for their country’s political freedom in 1960 – a tragic tale movingly recounted by Vermont author Julia Alvarez in her 1994 novel, In the Time of the Butterflies.
The braid of the 25-year-old Maria Teresa lies in state, a relic of a nation’s history and an all too easy metaphor for its many twists of fate.
Dedé Mirabal and her niece Minou Tavárez Mirabal, Minerva’s oldest child, arrived in Middlebury on November 6 – Election Day Eve – and visited with Vermont Woman prior to a dinner with Middlebury College students and a public address. Dedé – whom Alvarez calls the mother of the Dominican Republic’s democratic era, and Minou – quite possibly the country’s future president – came to launch Middlebury’s International Sixteen Days of Activism Against Gender Violence (see sidebar, page 33). The event was organized by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and Chellis House, the women’s resource center, of Middlebury College. Alvarez, writer-in-residence at the college, gave the introduction to the Mirabals, and also acknowledged Karin Hanta of the Gender Studies Program for having done an “amazing job to make this historic visit happen.”
Fleshing Out The Characters
“It’s not every day that an author gets to introduce her fictional characters in flesh and blood,” Alvarez wryly told the audience in her opening remarks. “In addition,” she noted further on, “their visit is taking place the night before Election Day. That symbolism should not be lost on any of us! No matter your politics…please, please go out and vote tomorrow, in honor of the men and women like the Mirabal sisters who have given their lives to ensure that we have the lucky privilege to elect our public servants.”
Alvarez feels a profound indebtedness to the four Mirabal sisters whose tragedy came the very same year that ten-year-old Julia and her three sisters escaped the regime. “They were the other sisters, the ones who stayed behind and paid for our freedom with their lives.”
At ten years of age, Alvarez did not know what was happening in her country, why there were always the black Volkswagens of the secret police blocking her family’s driveway, or why her parents were not taking her family on their annual vacation. “Unbeknownst to us, our father had joined an underground cell in the capital,” she told the Middlebury College audience. “In 1960, several members of my father’s cell were arrested, and my family fled the country, thanks to the help of a contact my father had made through the CIA. I will never forget that day, August 6, 1960, when we left everything behind to travel to a whole new country.”
Alvarez wrote in her 1995 essay “Our Papers” that years later she asked her mother, Why didn’t you tell us any of this back then… Why didn’t you just say, we’re leaving forever? The answer: Ay si, and get ourselves killed! You had the biggest mouth back then.
In those times, Dominicans had to watch their words for fear of being overheard by the secret police (SIM) or turned in by a neighbor. Rafael “El Jefe” (the Goat) Trujillo was the powerful and corrupt dictator from 1930 to 1961. Trained as a young man by US Marines, he enjoyed support to the end from the U.S. government because he was a leading Latin American anti-communist. He essentially disposed of the country’s constitution, abolished human rights, and terrorized anyone hinting opposition with imprisonment, torture, and death. Thousands disappeared under his regime. He monopolized the country’s economic system to amass a personal fortune. During his regime Dominican schoolchildren recited daily prayers for “God, country, and Trujillo.” Toward El Jefe’s end, with resistance movements finally able to start turning the tide, Trujillo grew ever more paranoid and vindictive, and is famously quoted as saying: “The only problems my government has are the [Catholic] Church and Minerva Mirabal.”
At the time that Alvarez arrived in New York City, three sisters just a generation older than her were living their final months, under house arrest for their activities as their country’s leading figures of resistance. Already, Minerva – the ringleader and firebrand – and her baby sister Maria Teresa had spent months at a time in prison, subjected to torture. The husbands of all three sisters, too, were imprisoned and tortured.
In a 1996 essay Alvarez recalls the moment she learned of Las Mariposas – the Mirabals’ code name which means “the Butterflies.” She was sitting in her family’s dark New York City living room, secretly paging through a December 1960 Time magazine brought home by her father – secretly, because her parents had forbidden the children to look at it: Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa were members of the same underground [my father] had bailed out of in order to save his life. Here, just four months after we had escaped, they were murdered on a lonely mountain road. They had been to visit their jailed husbands, who had been transferred to a distant prison so that the women would be forced to make this perilous journey… These three brave sisters and their husbands stood in stark contrast to the self-saving actions of my own family and of other Dominican exiles. Because of this, the Mirabal sisters haunted me.
Dedé Mirabal’s husband was not involved in the clandestine “Fourteenth of June” movement against Trujillo, so she did not accompany her sisters on the fateful journey that November day to visit the imprisoned husbands. Though the murders were made to look like a car accident, the ambush and assassination of Las Mariposas was carefully planned, beginning with the transfer of the husbands to a remote outpost far from the Mirabals’ home. On an isolated mountain road their Jeep was forced to a stop. They were taken to a sugarcane field, strangled and clubbed to death. Their bodies were then placed back in the Jeep, which was sent careening down a cliff. The Dominican people knew this was no accident, as claimed by the regime. It became the final straw for an oppressed people and within six months, El Jefe himself was ambushed and gunned down on a remote road. As the saying goes, the butterfly wings had, indeed, caused a typhoon.
On that day, Dedé Mirabal became mother of six now-motherless children in addition to her own three sons, and indeed, millions more for, as Alvarez told the Middlebury audience, “She is truly the mother of the new democratic nation.”
Brighter Political Horizons
Minou Tavárez Mirabal was four years old when her mother was killed. Three years later she lost her father, Manuel Aurelio Tavarez Justo, himself a popular democratic leader, when he was gunned down during a U.S.-backed military coup in 1964. A true child of revolution, she is now a leading figure in government. She has served as Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs and is currently in her second four-year term as a representative to the Chamber of Deputies (the Dominican equivalent of the U.S. House of Representatives). On the international front, she is vice-president of the Parliamentary Confederation of the Americas. The efforts and sacrifice of her parents and aunts brought forth a democratic society in their homeland, while Dedé shepherded Minou and the other cousins and siblings to adulthood, fostering a new generation of Dominican freedom and liberty.
“She says she had to survive in order to take care of us,” Minou tells me during their Vermont visit, translating my questions and Dedé’s answers. Dedé was determined, in the face of all the tragic loss and violent upheaval of the family’s lives, to ensure that the children were raised as normal boys and girls to be “good people, good hearts, without hate.”
“She tried to teach that lesson to us that we have to love, that we have to have love for the country, for the people,” Minou said.
Alvarez echoed this in her introductory remarks about Dedé, telling the audience, “She considered her triumph to be that she had raised all her children to be whole, happy, humane beings, unpoisoned by hatred and revenge, imbued with a fierce love of freedom and a sense of service to their community.
“I can truly say,” Alvarez continued, “that although the heroism of her sisters was what led me to their story, it was the triumphant example and empowering story of Dedé Mirabal which inspired me to write In the Time of the Butterflies, [which is] why the novel is dedicated to Dedé.”
It was not until a trip home to the Dominican Republic in 1986 that Alvarez even learned that Las Mariposas had a fourth sister, and discovered: She had suffered her own martyrdom: the one left behind to tell the story of the other three.
Though it may be difficult to pin down when it happened, Dedé eventually emerged from the suffocating stigma as “the one who survived” and returned to as normal a life as possible, given her lot. Dedé raised the children and cared for her mother, who survived her three daughters by 20 years. She later divorced and became a successful business owner.
Comparing her younger self circa 1956 with the Dedé Mirabal of 2006, she notably begins by describing an even earlier time in her life – “My childhood was a very happy one – wonderful, marvelous. It was quiet; everybody was together… those were the most wonderful times. I was a normal woman, and used to do everything young women did. By the time I was a young woman I had married.” Prior to marrying, she had helped her father run the family business, and later she would have her own small store selling women’s clothes, cosmetics, and accessories. “I see myself now as a person who has achieved what she wanted to, who is satisfied, and who has complied with the responsibility [that life put on me],” she explains.
Part of fulfilling that responsibility is to share the story, which she has done generously and patiently for decades, by all accounts. A memorial museum has been established in the Mirabal home, the Museo Hermanas Mirabal. It serves as a tribute to her sisters, but also to educate people about the horrors of dictatorship and the preciousness of freedom.
“She is at the museum every day,” Minou tells me. “She goes there, she talks to students, to the researchers, to people who come and visit the place. She sees this as her duty. She repeats and repeats the story and never tires. She thinks it her duty to keep this story alive; the principles, the values that are involved in this whole story – she thinks this has to survive and that that’s the way her sisters will survive, too.”
The Women Behind the Faces
In a passage from Alvarez’s novel, the fictitious character of Dedé muses: There are the three pictures of the girls, old favorites that are now emblazoned on the posters every November, making these once intimate snapshots seem too famous to be the sisters she knew.
Telling Dedé that I am one of four sisters, too, I ask her to share with me memories about Patria, Minerva and “Mate” – as sisters, not as the historical figures. The instant Minou finishes translating my words, Dedé is off. Her eyes sparkling, face lit up with smiles in between the rapid speech, I see that not all the lines on her remarkably youthful 81-year old face have been etched by sorrow – warm smiles and laughter, too, have been her sculptors.
Memories of dollhouses, games played, sisterly teasing, dares to venture at night beyond the range of the porch light. As she continues animatedly on, and though I’ve never studied Spanish, I’m now nonetheless getting the picture that Dedé is recalling from days so long ago that Maria Teresa was not even born – yet it’s told with a delight that makes it seem like [a teenager sharing a funny story at a pajama party.]
Minerva – always the one pushing the boundaries – once climbed to the heights of the family’s [limoncia] tree and sat perched up there, eating the fruit one after another while Patria and Dedé called up to her to toss some down to them. When she wouldn’t, they called for their mother and Minerva, thinking her mother was on her way to punish her, started to scramble down but fell to the ground, breaking her arm. Dedé and Patria felt guilty; Dedé recalls that she felt as if her own bone had been cracked. Concluding this story, Dedé is still grinning, despite her sister’s accident; those were the days when the worst they could imagine were tears caused by a playful accident.
It’s interesting that their mother’s consternation could rattle Minerva, yet she went on to defy one of the most brutal tyrants of the century. It’s also disarming to look at the pictures of the Mirabal sisters – black and white photographs taken at the height of the 1950s, women in their frocks, high-heeled pumps, babies on hip, raising a champagne glass as a young bride. These seem familiar, as if you’re paging through your own mother’s photo album; they are not the images one associates with underground revolutionaries. Minou agrees, commenting that they lived in a time and a place in which it was particularly uncommon for women to assume leadership roles of any kind, never mind one of this magnitude.
There are accounts of the “great political and intellectual maturity of Minerva, as well as the organizational ability she showed,” Minou told the Mead audience. “She played an important role in shaping the 14th of June Political Movement and its ideology in 1959. However, it fell to my father, another great hero of Dominican democracy, to be the president of that movement.
“Some accounts say that she was the person who showed the most leadership, firmness, organizational ability and political acumen to guide the group, but at that time, and perhaps today, it was inconceivable for a political movement made up mostly of men to be led by a woman,” she noted.
Inspiration for a New Generation
At the dinner held in the Mirabal women’s honor, Alvarez gathered several students who hail from the Dominican Republic, and led them in an impromptu singing of their nation’s anthem for Minou and Dedé. Over dinner, the world got ever smaller, in that proverbial way, for senior Carlos Beato.
“It was such an amazing experience, especially after finding out that Dedé and I both come from the same little town in the Dominican Republic,” Beato said of the evening. “I immediately called my mother to find out if she knew Dedé – not only does my mother know the Mirabals, but Dedé’s son Jaime David took care of my grandmother when she was dying. My father was also a personal driver of the family years back when he was young. I remember that night… wondering why it took me going away to college to figure out the history of the Mirabal sisters and my family’s many connections to them.”
Beato’s classmate Dana Weissman left Mead Chapel greatly impressed. “It was incredible to see Dedé up there, at 81 years old, as strong and confident as ever,” she commented to Aylie Baker of Middlebury’s student newspaper. “She’s an inspiration to all of us, hearing about the amazing things that she’s accomplished after all the hardships she’s endured.”
“My aunt’s name is Minerva - named after Minerva Mirabal,” added Nadeghda Gonzalez ‘09 proudly, whose family hails from the Dominican Republic.
With all the loss and sorrow that Dedé endured, she maintains that she never felt anger at her sister Minerva for having gotten her family, particularly their baby sister Maria Teresa in peril through her political activities. “They understood,” Minou says, relaying her aunt’s reply to my questions. “They felt scared and worried; they wanted to protect her, but they agreed with her beliefs and supported her.”
If Dedé were to meet a family today in similarly oppressive and dangerous political circumstances, what would she tell those sisters? Would she try to dissuade them, knowing firsthand the profound costs at stake?
Dedé is solemn as she says, “I would just tell them to take care of themselves. It was very difficult for me – but I will never tell them to stop fighting. Be careful, but do what you have to do.”
Middlebury College’s Program for the Sixteen Days Campaign
The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is an international campaign originating from the first Women’s Global Leadership Institute at Rutgers University in 1991. This year?s theme is: Celebrate 16 Years of 16 Days: Advance Human Rights — End Violence Against Women.
The start and end dates (November 25th, International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and December 10th, International Human Rights Day) were chosen to emphasize that violence against women is a violation of human rights. This time period also includes other significant dates including:
November 29, International Women Human Rights Defenders Day
December 1, World AIDS Day, and
December 6, which marks the Anniversary of the Montreal Massacre.
The presentation by Minou Tavárez Mirabal and Dedé Mirabal on November 6th was an early kickoff to the campaign sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program; Chellis House, the Women’s Resource Center; and the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs. Other upcoming events include:
Global AIDS Awareness Panel:
Friday, December 1, 4:30 p.m.
Robert A. Jones (Œ59) Conference Room Middlebury College.
A panel discussion examining local and international impact of AIDS, featuring Glen Elder, professor and chair of the Geography Department at UVM; Terje Anderson, founder of Vermont CARES; Bob Cluss, professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Middlebury College; and Alicia Battle, director of health education at Middlebury College.
Disposable Women: Factory Workers on the U.S.-Mexican Border
Monday, December 4, 4:30 p.m.
Robert A. Jones (Œ59) Conference Room Middlebury College.
Since 1993, over 370 women have been killed in Ciudad Juarez on the U.S.-Mexican border, many after suffering sexual abuse and torture; and murders showing similar characteristics have spread to the city of Chihuahua. Approximately 100 cases are suspected to be the work of one or more serial murderers – the rest are most likely murders that flourish in a city where women can be killed with complete impunity. The Mexican and American authorities have done little to investigate or prosecute those responsible. This lecture will feature Gabriela Baeza Ventura, assistant professor of Hispanic Literature from the University of Houston.
For further information, please contact Karin Hanta at 443-5937 or khanta@middlebury.edu.
