In 1999, the United Nations General Assembly designated 25th of November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, inviting governments, international organizations and NGOs to organize activities on that day to raise public awareness of one of the most devastating human rights violations.
The choice of this date depends on the fact that in 1960 in the Dominican Republic, Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal, 3 sisters who had fought against the authoritarian regime of Rafael Trujillo, were killed in an ambush by the secret services.
It was October 13th, 1949 when the political militancy of the Mirabal sisters began on a day of celebration, the one dedicated to San Cristobal, organized by the dictator for the richest society of Moca and Salcedo; it is on that occasion that Minerva, the most intellectual of the three sisters, dares to openly challenge Trujillo by rejecting her advances and supporting her own political ideas.
That date marks the beginning of continuous reprisals against the second daughter of the Mirabal family and her entire family, ranging from periods of detention in prison to the confiscation of assets. A systematic persecution that will also convince the sisters Patria and Maria Teresa and their respective husbands to become activists against the dictator of the Dominican Republic, gathering in the clandestine political group called the “June 14 Movement“.
From that moment on, the Mirabal sisters will carry out their clandestine activities under the name “mariposas”, the “butterflies”, and their role will be both active and decisive, so much so as to induce Trujillo to publicly declare: “I have only two problems: the Catholic Church and the Mirabal sisters. It needs to be resolved.”
After that speech three of the four Mirabal sisters died and the reconstruction of events showed that Trujillo had planned everything: armed men beaten, raped, strangled and threw into a ditch, in an attempt to make their deaths look like an accident, the three women along a isolated mountain road, then simulating a car accident.
Adela, known by the diminutive of Dedè, the fourth Mirabal sister, survived the attack and dedicated the rest of her life to continuing the work of the sisters and to promoting justice and democratic values. The fictional story of the Mirabal sisters is told in a beautiful book by Julia Alvarez, In The Time of the Butterflies, which through the story told by Dedè to Alvarez manages to give voice to the valor, courage and strength of the “Mariposas”.