The world commemorates today the 40th anniversary of the assassination of the Mirabal sisters. The United Nations recently voted to declare the day, Day of No Violence Against Women, in honor of the brave sisters. María Teresa, Minerva and Patria were murdered by slugs of the Trujillo regime’s feared Servicio de Inteligencia Militar in 1960 as they made their way back to their home in Ojo de Agua, Salcedo after visiting their jailed husbands in Puerto Plata. They were murdered and their car thrown down a cliff so that their deaths appeared to be an accident. But the slaying of the Mirabal sisters backfired for the regime. Nobody believed the story of the accident. The death of the sisters was the straw that broke the camel’s back, as the saying goes. Dominicans were outraged to find out that the dictator was murdering even women. This outrage spurred the eventual assassination of Trujillo in 1961, about six months after the death of the Mirabal sisters. The home where the sisters grew up is today a museum.
