March 24th, 2021

Las Hermanas Mirabal (The Mirabal Sisters) also known as Las Mariposas (The Butterflies) were three revolutionary sisters, Patria, Minerva, and María Teresa Mirabal who opposed the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and were vocal activists against his regime.

From the 1930s through the 1950s, the Dominican Republic was ruled by the totalitarian Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. The country’s citizens quickly grew fearful of expressing any dissent after witnessing his cruelty and ruthless actions. It was not until the Mirabal Sisters challenged his dominance and power that the citizens started to feel hopeful for Trujillo’s potential defeat.

At the age of 22, Minerva was sexually harassed by Trujillo. After having turned down his sexual overtures, she was jailed and banned from continuing her law studies and spent three years under house arrest at her parents' home in Ojo de Agua, Salcedo. Eventually, Minerva returned to her law studies and graduated with the highest honors from the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo. The time she spent in house arrest fed her hunger for justice and motivated her to work tirelessly to take Trujillo out of power alongside her sisters.

Eventually, the three sisters and the group they were involved in became a threat to this commanding dictator because they were constantly involved with plotting to overthrow his fascist government. By the end of 1960, Trujillo had lost patience with the revolutionary movement and particularly with the Mirabal sisters. He plotted his retaliation towards the sisters and gave orders to kill them. On November 25th, 1960, they were arrested, subjected to horrific torture, and killed.

The sisters created the biggest revolutionary movement Trujillo ever faced in all his thirty one years of dictatorship. On December 17th, 1999, the United Nations General Assembly designated November 25th as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in honor of the sisters. Feel free to learn more about the story of the Mirabal sisters by watching the movie In the Time of the Butterflies (En el Tiempo de las Mariposas) based on the book In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez.