Stuff You Missed in History ClassThis 2018 episode covers the four Mirabal sisters, who are national heroes in the Dominican Republic. But they weren't very well-known elsewhere until 20 or so years ago when they became the subject of a historical novel.
Happy Saturday. Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and the date for this was selected to recognize the mirror Ball Sisters who were murdered at the order of Raphael Trauhio in nineteen sixty. So we are sharing our episode on the mirra Ball Sisters as Today's Saturday Classic. This episode originally came out on November twenty first, twenty eighteen. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Today we're going to talk about the Miraball Sisters, who are a really frequent listener request, including from Magdalena, Chanelle, Sophia or maybe Sofia depending on where she's from, a different Tracy who is not me, Jennifer, and Jamie. These sisters fought against the brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo, who was nicknamed El Hefe or the Chief in the Dominican Republic. There were actually four Mirabal sisters. They were Minerva Patria, Maria Theresa, and Dite. Minerva Patria and Maria Teresa were the most heavily involved in this fight against Trujillo. Deta carried on their legacy after they were murdered. Today, the sisters are national heroes in the Dominican Republic, but they were not really well known elsewhere until starting about twenty or so years ago. They became the subject of the historical novel In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez. Her family was involved in the same struggle against Trujillo, and they fled the Dominican Republic shortly before the sisters were assassinated. That book also was made into a movie starring Salma Hayek in two thousand and one. Today we are going to set the stage for all this with a quick look at the colonial history of the Dominican Republic and its neighbor Haiti, and that will help put Raphaeltrechillo's rise to power in context. And then it will also help us get a sense of exactly what it was that these sisters were fighting against. And I also want to note that this episode includes a lot of violence, particularly violence against women and including sexual violence. So for background, Hispaniola is one island that is home to two nations, the Dominican Republic in the east and Haiti in the west, and the northern part of the border between these two nations is the Dahabone River that has also been called historically the Massacre River. It initially had that name after a massacre was committed there in seventeen twenty eight, although today it is also associated with a later massacre that we were going to talk about shortly. Like a lot of other islands in the Caribbean, in the fifteenth century, Hispaniola was inhabited by the indigenous Tino people. Christopher Columbus landed on Hispaniola during his first voyage in fourteen ninety two, and Spain was the first European nation to establish a colony there. Spain later seated the way eastern side of the island to France, and then the French side of the island became independent after the Haitian Revolution, which ended in eighteen oh four, and the newly established nation of Haiti later annexed the eastern side of the island, which was unified from eighteen twenty two to eighteen forty four, and what's now the Dominican Republic first declared its independence from Haiti in eighteen forty four, and then it became independent from Spain in eighteen sixty five. At about the same time that the Dominican Republic became independent from Spain, the United States started to express some interest in controlling the whole island, in part because of its strategic location in the Caribbean, and after various involvements with both nations, that finally started to happen after World War One, first with Haiti and then with the Dominican Republic. The US occupation of Haiti began after the assassination of Haitian President Jean Vilbrun Guillaume Sam on July twenty eighth of nineteen fifteen. The United States had already been concerned about the nation's overall stability, and after the assassination, the US took control, ostensibly to keep Haiti from descending into anarchy. Then, the Haitian American Treaty of nineteen fifteen formalized American control over various aspects of the Haitian government and economy. The United States occupied the Dominican Republic in nineteen sixteen, and a lot of the justification for this was really similar. The United States was concerned about the increasing presence of German businesses in the Dominican Republic, as had been the case in Haiti. American troops were deployed to the Dominican Republic before that point, including seven hundred and fifty Marines deployed after the nineteen twelve assassination of Dominican President Ramon Ceseris.
These two occupations had a lot of similarities. Both were ostensibly motivated by concerns over instability, including presidential assassinations and increasing German influence in each name. Both of them followed years of American involvement in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, including troop deployments, and both occupations were marked by racism, violence, and ongoing unrest and uprisings. At the same time.
In the case of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the United States took the opportunity to try to make these nations friendlier and more accommodating to the American government and to United States business interests. This included manipulating elections to favor candidates that the United States approved of and putting pressure on both governments to pass laws that would benefit US interests. The United States began withdrawing from the Dominican Republic in nineteen twenty four and from Haiti in nineteen twenty nine. Then in the nineteen thirties, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced his Good Neighbor Policy, which at least in theory, stressed non intervention in other nations affairs In Latin America, the US didn't physically occupy the Dominican Republic or Hateia after this point, but it did continue to try to influence both nations through things like military assistants and loans. We have really really barely scratched the surface of these occupations. We're just setting the stage for what happened next, which is that Horacio Vasquez was elected president of the Dominican Republic in nineteen twenty four. That was in an election that had been supervised by the United States, But in nineteen thirty he was overthrown in a coup. During this coup, General Raphael Leonidas Trujillo Molina kept the Dominican Army from becoming involved rather than defending the government. Once the coup was successful, O Trujillo ran for president, but also established a police force to assassinate his rivals and their supporters, so with nominal interruptions, Trichello had total control over the Dominican Republic for the next thirty one years, starting in nineteen thirty and he was a product of the American occupation of the Dominican Republic. He had been trained by the US Marines. He had been part of the Constabulary Guard, which was a police force that the Marines had established. An incident in nineteen thirty seven really illustrates what Trujillo was like as a dictator because they had been colonized by two different nations. The Dominican Republic and Haiti had totally different languages, cultures, and priorities. Often the relationship between the two nations had been somewhere on a spectrum between tents and violent, but when Trujillo became president in nineteen thirty the two countries had a mostly cordial relationship.
The border region between the two was in many ways bicultural, with many people living there speaking some combination of French, Spanish and Haitian Creole. Trhio found this bicultural border region to be a really unacceptable threat. It was a threat to his regime. It was a threat to the Dominican Republic as a whole. He also thought the fact that parts of it were really remote and not well defined would offer a way for rebels and insurgents to escape from the Dominican Republic into Haiti, and some of this was also connected to race. In general, the population of Haiti had a higher proportion of African ancestry and darker skin than the population of the Dominican Republic, so Trujillo really wanted the border region to look more like the eastern part of the nation in terms of culture, economy, and race. Trujillo toured the border region between the two nations in August and September of nineteen thirty seven to inspect a highway that was being built, and after that he decided that the Haitian presence at the border was an urgent problem that needed to be dealt with. On October second, nineteen thirty seven, he ordered the killing of about three hundred Haitians at the border, describing it as a solution to purported thefts and infractions committed by Haitians. It was a solution he promised would continue. This led to a tremendous massacre in which as many as twenty thousand people were killed, most of them Haitians or Dominicans of Haitian descent. Dominican troops and conscripted civilians mostly used machetes, so this would look like the military hadn't been involved. This is known as the Petihel or Parsley massacre because, according to some accounts, the Spanish word for parsley was used to try to separate dark skinned Dominicans from Haitians. If the person couldn't roll the r in Petihel very well, they were assumed to be Haitian and killed. This is just one example of what was going on in Truchio's dictatorship In the years before the massacre. He had placed the Dominican Republic under martial law and renamed the capitol after himself. After the massacre, he continued to stoke anti Haitian sentiments and policy. He continued to have political opponents murdered as he had leading up to his own election. He arranged monopolies and kickbacks so that he could personally benefit from Dominican business. He controlled virtually every aspect of life, including the press, the mail, passport, and air travel.
So this is who the Mirabal sisters were fighting against and we will talk more about them after a sponsor break. A renoted earlier. There were four Mirabal sisters. The oldest was Patria Mirabal born on February twenty seventh, nineteen twenty four. She was named Patria because she was born on Dominican Independence Day. The next was Belgeka Adella Mirabal, who was known as Data, born on March first, nineteen twenty five. The third sister was Minerva Mirabal born March twelfth, nineteen twenty sixth, and the youngest was Maria Treesa Mirabal born on October fifteenth, nineteen thirty five. They were born and grew up in Ojo de Agua, in the northern part of the Dominican Republic. The family was relatively well off, and the girls attended a Catholic boarding school. Their upbringing was fairly conventional for their social class, and all four women married respectable men and had children. Patrio was the first to marry in nineteen forty one, becoming Patria Mirabal de Gonzales. After Patria had gotten married, but before any of the younger sisters had, the Mirabell sisters caught the attention of President Trujillo Trhio's relationship with women was predatory. He had a squad of beauty scouts who traveled through the Dominican Republic to find attractive young women and girls to bring back to him. Some of these girls were still in school. The women were essentially kidnapped and raped and forced to either spend a night with Trujillo or to stay with him for a much longer stretch. When Trujillo traveled himself, families typically tried to hide their female members to keep them away from him. The Mirabals were invited to a party at Trujillo's estate in San Cristobal, not far from the Dominican capital. Invitations like this were really not something that could be turned down, and so they all went, and while they were there, Minerva Mirraball in particular, caught Trujillo's attention. There's some disagreement about exactly what happened. Some witnesses say they heard or saw Minerva slapp Trujio across the face after their conversation became heated. Members of her family later said that there had been a very loud argument, but there wasn't a physical slap regardless. Raphael Trujillo had made advances on Minerva Mirabal and she had spurned him. Not only had she done that, but she had done it in front of other people, and this launched a personal revenge campaign against the Mirror Balls in general and Minerva specifically, and that went on for years. Past podcast guest Jason Porath has a rejected Princess's entry about the sisters, and he describes Trujillo as quote a man for whom no slight was too small, no grudge too big. The sister's father sent repeated letters of apology to President at Trujillo, but he was ultimately imprisoned. Minerva and her mother were also held under house arrest in a hotel until Minerva agreed to meet with Trujillo again. He tried to coerce her into having sex with him in order to secure her father's release, but she refused. Although her father was ultimately let out of prison, he died not long after he was finally released. Trujillo's retaliation against the Mirabal family went on and on, and it drove them into financial ruin.
He was so public about it that people refused to do business with the Mirra Balls the family was under constant surveillance by the Dominican Military Intelligence Service, who was always willing to hear tips about how the Miraballs had misbehaved or been disloyal. Minerva in particular, was reported for everything from refusing to toast the Dictator's good health to telling a car salesman that Truthio's owning a particular model was a reason for her not to buy it. People who associated with the Miraballs were taken in for questioning, and that questioning often involved imprisonment or torture.
This vendetta against Minerva Mirabal also affected her ability to study and practice law. First, she was denied enrollment for her second year of law school until she gave a public speech in praise of the dictator. Then, once she actually finished law school, she was refused a license to practice, even though she had graduated at the top of her class.
After all this ongoing harassment, abuse, and retaliation, it's not surprising that several of the Mirabals became involved in a revolutionary movement to try to unseat Raphael Trujillo in the nineteen fifties. By this point, all four sisters had married, and Patria Minerva and Maria Theresa's husbands were also involved in the movement, but this wasn't just about their own families experiences. The sisters wanted the Dominican Republic to have peace and democracy. By the late nineteen fifties, several organizations had formed to try to resist President Trujillo, and on June fourteenth, nineteen fifty nine, exiled Dominicans returned to the island of Hispaniola to try to overthrow him. Many of these exiled Dominicans had trained in Cuba and had been part of the Cuban Revolution. The Dominican military put down this uprising and most of the participants were killed. This incident inspired the name for the revolutionary organization that the Mirabal sisters and their husbands helped found. This was called the Fourteenth of June Movement. It was formally established on January tenth, nineteen sixty, in the home of Patria Mirabal and her husband, Pedro Gonzales. Within the movement, the sisters were known as Las Mariposis, or the Butterflies. In January of nineteen sixty, the Fourteenth of June Movement formulated a plan to assassinate Trujillo with a bomb at a cattle fair. There are stories of Patria and her husband and children dismantling firecrackers to make bombs around their kitchen table. But the day before this planned assassination, most of them members of the fourteenth of June movement were arrested, and this included Minerva and Maria Theresa Miraval, their husbands, and Patria's husband, although Patria herself was not jailed.
Then, in July of nineteen sixty, with anti Truchillo activities going on in the Dominican Republic, Trichillo attempted to have Venezuelan President Romulo Bettencourt assassinated using a car that was filled with dynamite. He had repeatedly criticized Trehillo, and although Trichillo had already been involved in other plots to assassinate him, this was the one that drew international attention. The Organization of American States unanimously voted to condemn Truchillo's actions and to implement sanctions. The nations condemning Trujillo's actions included the United States, which until this point had taken a relatively tolerant stance of his dictatorship because he denounced communism, but after this assassination attempt, the United States withdrew its ambassador and closed its embassy, facing widespread criticism and an international fact finding mission into what was happening in the Dominican Republic. Trehillo freed several women from Dominican prisons, including Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal. Their husbands, though remained incarcerated. Eventually, the Mirabal sisters' husbands were transferred to a prison in Porto Plata on the Dominican coast. Getting there from Ojo de Agua required a drive over a relatively isolated mountain range. The Mirabal sisters made at least two trips to visit their husbands there without any trouble. They had to get official permission to make these visits, so they knew that they were probably being monitored and that they were making this trip at a great risk to their own lives. They were trying to work out a way to rent a house in Puerto Plata so that they could be nearer to their husbands, but on November twenty fifth, while returning home from a visit, they were overtaken by Truchuello's agents. Patria Mirabald managed to flag down a passing truck and tell the driver to please send word to their family in ohaed Agua to tell them what was happening. Then Truchio's agents beat all three of the sisters and their driver, strangled them and put their bodies back into the jeep that they had been traveling in, and the jeep was pushed off the side of the mountain to try to make it look like it was an accident. We'll talk about the aftermath of this assassination after another quick sponsor break. President Trujillo had made it clear that he thought the Mera Ball sisters were the source of a lot of his problems. He was facing international condemnation over the assassination attempt of the Venezuelan president, and unrest was ongoing in the Dominican Republic, even though at this point most of the male leaders of the Fourteenth of June movement were still in prison. On November two, nineteen sixty, he had remarked that his two remaining problems the Catholic Church and the Mirabal sisters. So it's really clear that he thought that killing them was the solution and would fix all these problems. He was having, but their assassinations had the opposite effect, and today that action is regarded as the beginning of the end for Trujillo's reign. Nobody bought the idea that their deaths were an accident, apart from Patria's effort to raise the alarm. When their bodies were recovered, there were clear finger marks on their necks from where they had been strangled. The deaths of Minerva Patria and Maria Theresa Mirabal got attention in a way that all of Trhillo's prior crimes really hadn't. They were young, attractive women. Patrio was thirty six, Minerva was thirty four, and Maria Theresa was twenty four. All of them had children. Trehillo started to lose the support of the army and elites that had previously backed his rule. Maria Theresa's husband, Leandro Gusman, described it as quote, they fertilized the earth with their blood to bring about Trujillo's end. Six months later, on May thirtieth, nineteen sixty one, Rafael Trujillo was killed in an ambush. Some of the people involved were members of the Dominican Army. Although Trujillo's son rounded up most of them and had them executed. At least one survived. In the Dominican Republic. Today, the killing of Trujillo is generally regarded as justice being done rather than as an assassination. In nineteen sixty two, the Mirabel sisters assassins were put on trial, and this televised trial began on June twenty seventh of that year. Although the men were convicted and sentenced to twenty to thirty years of hard labor, they escaped from prison in nineteen sixty five during the Dominican Crisis, which is also known as the Dominican Civil War. They weren't apprehended after that war was over. The assassination of Rafael Trujillo unfortunately did not put an end to unrest, violence, or dictatorial control over the Dominican Republic. Trujillo's successor was Juan Bosch, who intended to reform the government, but was overthrown in a military coup in nineteen sixty three. This led to the Civil War that we mentioned a moment ago. As several factions tried to take control of the country. The United States intervened out of fear that the results would be a communist dictator, basically what was called another Cuba. More than twenty two thousand troops were deployed, and they arrived on April twenty eighth, nineteen sixty five, and the end The Dominican Republic's next president was Joaquin Belaguer, who was elected in another election that was overseen by the United States. He had been Trahio's vice president, and he remained in power for much of the next thirty years until nineteen ninety six. He definitely didn't have nearly the tyrannical reputation that Rafael Trahillo did, but his later terms in office in particular, faced allegations of human rights abuses and electoral fraud.
After her sister's deaths De de Marrabal helped raise her nieces and nephews, and she protected her sister's legacy. She became known as Donia Dede, founding the Mirabal Sisters Foundation in nineteen ninety two in the Mirabal Sisters Museum. In nineteen ninety four, she also wrote a book whose title translates to Alive in Their Garden, which was about her sisters and their work. Data died from natural causes on February first, twenty fourteen, at the age of eighty eight. Members of the Mirabal family have gone on to be part of the Dominican government. After the nineteen ninety six election, Dade's son, Jamie Davide Fernandez Mirrabal, became Vice President and he has served in other roles in the government as well. Minerva's daughter, known as Mineux, became the Deputy Foreign Minister. Her father and Minerva's husband, Manuel Tavares Eusto, continued to be involved in the movement after Minerva's death. He was assassinated by former Trihillo generals in nineteen sixty three. Today there are memorials to the Mirabal sisters all over the Dominican Republic. Virtually every town has something to commemorate them, whether that is a street, a school, a plaque, or some other monument. On March eighth, nineteen ninety seven, an obelisk that Trujillo had built in honor of himself was painted with a mural depicting the Mirabal sisters. In two thousand and seven, the Dominican Republic, Salcedo Province was renamed Harmanas Mirabal Province.
The museum that Daye Mirabal established is in the last house that the sisters lived in, and on November twenty fifth, two thousand, the sisters remains were exhumed, along with those of Minerva's husband, and they were all reinterred on the museum grounds.
In nineteen ninety nine, the United Nations General Assembly issued a resolution naming November twenty fifth the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in commemoration of the Mirabal Sisters. The day had been similarly observed in Latin America and the Caribbean since nineteen eighty one. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out of the archive, if you heard an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can find us all over social media at misst Dhistory, and you can subscribe to our show on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
