11/20/2023 0 Comments Young maria teresa mirabal![]() Thereafter, Minerva struggled as Trujillo personally toyed with her life. Minerva soon realized that she was his target, and politely turned down his entreaties. When he forced the issue, she slapped him in the face, gathered her family, and got the hell out of dodge. One such mission resulted in him inviting forcing the Mirabals to come to one of his parties. Throughout his reign, Trujillo employed scores of “beauty scouts” to scour the countryside for young girls - often very young - for him to romance, kidnap, and/or rape. However, it was Trujillo’s vicious lust that pit him directly against the Mirabals. Estimates of the men, women and children killed range from 13,000 to 20,000 Trujillo’s soldiers murdered Haitians working as sugar cane cutters or living in Dominican territory. One of the most infamous episodes of his dictatorship (which first influenced Minerva) was the massacre of thousands of Haitian citizens in 1937. Those who spoke out against him often died in unexplained, brutal circumstances 1. He owned or directly controlled much of the country’s most vital utilities - the radio, the mail, the press, the airlines, and the passport office. He used his secret police and extensive spy network to keep the nation’s eyes open and mouths shut. The sisters - Minerva, Patria, Maria Teresa, and Dede - all went to Catholic boarding school, married good men, had children, went to church… in short, not obvious candidates for revolutionaries.īut Trujillo was a true monster. ![]() The Mirabals were from a relatively well-to-do provincial family. And they willingly gave their lives to end Trujillo’s reigning torture. ![]() It was not until a group of sisters slapped Trujillo in the face (both literally and figuratively) that the nation finally found the courage to follow their example and oust the despot. Obsessively controlled by cruel dictator Rafael Trujillo - a man for whom no slight was too small, no grudge too big - the nation’s citizens quickly grew fearful of expressing any dissent. The Dominican Republic of the 1950s was a totalitarian nightmare. “Si me matan…Yo sacaré mis brazos de la tumba y seré mas fuerte” “If they kill me… I’ll reach my arms out through my tomb and I’ll be even stronger.” – Minerva Mirabal ![]()
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