In Time Of Butterflies

atria, Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal were three women in Ojo de Agua, a place belonging to a small province in the Dominican Republic called Salcedo.

These women had the courage to fight for political freedom of their country, firmly opposed the tyrannies a railway that has taken Latin America, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo. Attitude for which they were persecuted, imprisoned several times and finally brutally murdered on November 25, 1960.

In honor of these brave sisters, each November 25 marks the International Day of No Violence Against Women. This was established in the First Latin American and Caribbean Feminist held in Bogotá, Colombia in 1981.

The Mirabal sisters are also known and represented as the "Butterflies", as this is the secret name of Minerva in clandestine political activities against the Trujillo tyranny. Years later, Pedro Mir (Dominican national poet) used this name in his poem "Amen de Mariposas" which expresses the tragedy that was the murder of the three heroines. In this decade, the prominent writer Julia Alvarez Dominican-American titles his novel based on the lives of the Mirabal sisters, In the Time of the Butterflies. This publication provides further representation of the Mirabal sisters and the Butterflies.

Heroines of the fight against Trujillo. Daughters of Mercedes Reyes Camilo (Chea alias) and Enrique Mirabal, merchant and landowner. Born in Ojo de Agua, Salcedo, then common Espaillat province. The first born was Patria Mercedes, February 27, 1924, shortly before they left our country intervening U.S. troops, the second was baptized with the names of Maria Argentina Minerva, was born on March 13, 1926, and the third, Antonia Maria Teresa, was born on October 15, 1935.

In Ojo de Agua made his first studies. Later, in 1938, Patria, Minerva and one of his sisters still living, Belgium Adela, aka Dede (March 2, 1925) were sent to study at Immaculate Conception School in La Vega. Maria Teresa remained at home due to age: she was just three years.

Of the four sisters, Minerva, as witnessed by those who knew him since childhood, he demonstrated that came into the world with a prodigious intellect and a remarkable spiritual sensitivity, are factors that made it a very attractive person, and a devourer of books on literature and poetry. In his spare time, Minerva also be exercised in the paint. All daughters of marriage Mirabal Reyes, were fair, but Minerva's beauty was legendary. At the school where he studied at La Vega, where he graduated from high school with excellent marks in 1946, participated as an actress in several plays and other cultural activities where he served as declaimer.

In June 1949, Minerva and her parents, invited by the highest authorities of the province, attended a party given in Santiago at the Government Palace in honor of the dictator Trujillo, which mark the beginning of course tragic for the whole family: Minerva Mirabal Trujillo met and was attracted by her beauty. Already there had known the young Minerva communist leader Pericles Franco, one of the founders of the Popular Socialist Party, who had been in jail several times, and who established intimate friendship, which many suspected that sustained romantic relationships.