Сестры Мирабаль: Героини Доминиканской Республики

Dominican political protestors, assassinated in 1960

the province
The Mirabal sisters (lang es eɾˈmanas miɾaˈβal) were four sisters from the Dominican Republic, three of whom (Patria, Minerva and María Teresa) opposed the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo (el Jefe) and were involved in clandestine activities against his regime. The three sisters were assassinated on 25 November 1960. The last sister, Adela, who was not involved in political activities at the time, died of natural causes on 1 February 2014. Of the sisters, Minerva was the one who had the most active role in politics, being the founder of the June 14 Revolutionary Movement together with her husband es. Maria Teresa also became involved in the Movement. The second oldest sister, Patria, did not have the same level of political activity as her other sisters, but supported them. She lent her house to store weapons and tools from the insurgents. They are considered national heroines of the Dominican Republic. Their remains rest in a mausoleum that was declared an extension of the National Pantheon, located in the Hermanas Mirabal House Museum, the last residence of the sisters. The assassinations turned the Mirabal sisters into "symbols of both popular and feminist resistance". In 1999, in their honor, the United Nations General Assembly designated 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. All four sisters attended primary school in their village, Ojo de Agua, and attended a Catholic boarding school, El Colegio de la Inmaculada, for their secondary education in the city of La Vega. When Trujillo came to power, the family lost almost their entire fortune. The sisters, especially Minerva, believed that the dictatorship was ruining the country, so they participated in the creation and organization of the June 14 Revolutionary Movement. Within this group, they were known as Las Mariposas. Two of the sisters, Minerva and María Teresa, were imprisoned on several occasions in both La Victoria and La 40 prisons. They and their husbands were subjected to cruel torture during the Trujillo regime. Despite these facts, they continued to fight against the dictatorship.

Patria Mercedes Mirabal Reyes (27 February 1924 – 25 November 1960), commonly known as Patria was the oldest of the four Mirabal sisters. When she was 14, she was sent by her parents to a Catholic boarding school, Colegio Inmaculada Concepción in La Vega. She left school when she was 17 and married Pedro González, a farmer, who would later aid her in challenging the Trujillo regime. Patria had three children.

Bélgica Adela Mirabal Reyes (1 March 1925 – 1 February 2014), commonly known as Dedé, was the second daughter of the Mirabal family. Unlike her sisters, she did not go to college. Instead, she became the traditional homemaker, Dedé was the last surviving sister of the family. She died at the age of 88, and professed her entire life that it was her destiny to survive so that she was able to "tell their story".

María Argentina Minerva Mirabal Reyes (12 March 1926 – 25 November 1960), commonly known as Minerva, was the third daughter. At the age of 12, she followed Patria to the Colegio Inmaculada Concepción. After Minerva's rejection of Trujillo, her parents prohibited Minerva from registering for law school due to concerns that she would get involved in politics and ultimately be killed. However, after seeing how upset Minerva was, her parents relented six years later and she enrolled at the University of Santo Domingo, where she later graduated summa cum laude. Minerva was the first woman to graduate from law school in the Dominican Republic. Due to her previous rejection of Trujillo's advances, when Minerva graduated, her diploma was stripped of her honors and her license to practice law was ultimately turned down. According to the historian Bernard Diederich, Minerva Mirabal was arrested twice; she was first jailed in January 1960, at the start of the wave of repression of 1J4 members where "hundreds of 1J4 members are rounded up and tortured" She attended the Colegio Inmaculada Concepción, graduated from the Liceo de San Francisco de Macorís in 1954, and went on to the University of Santo Domingo, where she studied mathematics. Later in her life, María Teresa dated Leandro Guzmán. While dating, before Leandro was allowed to hold María Teresa's hand, she asked him how his family felt about Trujillo. Leandro responded, " there's no problem. At home, that was the first thing I learned to hate Trujillo." Everyone in the family, including Patria's teenaged children, helped distribute pamphlets about the many people whom Trujillo had killed, and obtained materials for guns and bombs to use when they eventually openly revolted. Within the group, the sisters called themselves "Las Mariposas" ("The Butterflies"), after Minerva's underground name. The three husbands were incarcerated in January at La Victoria Penitentiary in Santo Domingo, and then, in November, two of them were transferred to Puerto Plata. and clubbed to death. The bodies were then gathered and put in their Jeep, which was run off the mountain road in an attempt to make their deaths look like an accident. As to whether Trujillo ordered the killings or whether the secret police acted on its own, one historian wrote, "We know orders of this nature could not come from any authority lower than national sovereignty. That was none other than Trujillo himself; still less could it have taken place without his assent." Also, one of the murderers, Ciriaco de la Rosa, said "I tried to prevent the disaster, but I could not because if I had he, Trujillo, would have killed us all."

[[File:Mirabal old house. jpg|thumb|250px|The old house of the Mirabal family and the residence of Dedé Mirabal until her death on 1 February 2014, aged 88. However, the details of the Mirabal sisters' assassinations were "treated gingerly at the official level" until 1996, when President Joaquín Balaguer was forced to step down after more than two decades in power. Balaguer was Trujillo's protégé and had been the president at the time of the assassinations in 1960 (though, at the time, he "distanced himself from General Trujillo and initially carved out a more moderate political stance"). A review of the history curriculum in public schools in 1997 recognized the Mirabals as national martyrs. She lived in the house in Salcedo where the sisters were born until her death in 2014, aged 88.

In 1994, Dominican American author Julia Alvarez published her novel In the Time of the Butterflies, a fictionalized account of the lives of the Mirabal sisters. Alvarez called the sisters "feminist icons" and "a reminder that we have our revolutionary heroines, our Che Guevaras, too". Mario Vargas Llosa's 2000 novel, The Feast of the Goat, portrays the assassination of Trujillo and its effect on the lives of Dominicans. It refers often to the Mirabal sisters. Jon M. Chu's 2021 movie In The Heights, based on the musical of the same name, references the Mirabal sisters.