"On November 25, 1960, three sisters Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal were found dead at the bottom of a ravine near La Cumbre, a mountainous stretch of road in the Dominican Republic. The jeep they were traveling in had plunged 150 meters (about 500 feet) into a mangled heap. It looked like an accident except their bodies, and that of their driver, bore signs of beating and strangulation."
"Dissidents were often silenced with impunity. The Mirabal sisters were among them. Born into a well-off rural family, their political consciousness was sparked early by the regime's abuses which also hit close to home. Minerva, the first woman to earn a law degree in the country, had once rejected Trujillo's sexual advances. She was harassed, denied her license to practice and placed under constant watch."
On November 25, 1960, Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal were found dead at the bottom of a ravine near La Cumbre after their jeep plunged about 150 meters. Their bodies and that of their driver bore signs of beating and strangulation. The Dominican Republic was under Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina's repressive, decades-long dictatorship where dissent was often silenced with impunity. The sisters' political consciousness grew from regime abuses. Minerva, the first woman to earn a law degree in the country, rejected Trujillo's sexual advances and faced harassment, denial of her license and constant surveillance. The sisters and their husbands formed the clandestine 14th of June Movement, known as Las Mariposas, which distributed pamphlets, organized resistance cells and exposed regime crimes. Minerva and Maria Teresa were arrested and released several times. On the day they died, the sisters were returning from visiting their imprisoned husbands.
Read at www.dw.com
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