President Danilo Medina and former President Leonel Fernandez attended the wake for Belgica Adela Mirabal Reyes (Dona Dede) who died yesterday, Sunday 2 February. She had been hospitalized at the Centro de Medicina Avanzada Doctor Abel Gonzalez in Santo Domingo for respiratory troubles. She was 88. She will be buried in her hometown of Ojo de Agua in the Mirabal Sisters province today, Monday 3 February. Her wake was attended by hundreds of thousands of mourners at the Blandino Funeral Home in Santo Domingo from 1pm to 11pm.
She was the surviving sister of the four Mirabal sisters, best known as political dissidents during the regime of dictator Rafael Trujillo. Her sisters, Minerva, Maria Teresa and Patria (The Butterflies) were returning from Puerto Plata on 25 November 1960 after visiting their husbands, who were political prisoners of the Trujillo dictatorship, when they were murdered. The murder marked a turning point and led to the decline of the Trujillo regime.
Dede Mirabal went on to raise her nieces and nephews who grew up as one family. They were Nelson Gonzalez Mirabal, Noris Gonzalez Mirabal and Raul Gonzalez Mirabal (Patria’s children), Minou Tavarez Mirabal and Manolo Tavarez Mirabal (Minerva’s children), and Jacqueline Guzman Mirabal (Maria Teresa’s daughter).
In 1999, the United Nations General Assembly commemorated the sisters’ legacy by designating 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in their honor.
Dona Dede devoted her later years to the conservation of her sisters’ memory through the Hermanas Mirabal Museum House in Conuco, Salcedo that was founded in 1994.
She is survived by her son, Jaime David Fernandez, former Vice President of the Republic and current Minister of Sports and by Jaime Enrique Fernandez Mirabal. Another son, Jaime Rafael Fernandez Mirabal, passed away in November 2013.
A week of mourning has been declared in her native province of Hermanas Mirabal (Salcedo), also renamed in honor of the sisters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirabal_sisters
www.diariolibre.com/noticias/2014/02/03/i465641_comunidad-ojo-agua-lloran-doa-ded-mirabal.html
www.7dias.com.do/portada/2014/02/02/i156927_dede-otra-mariposa-que-lleno-historia-memoria-sus-alas.html#.Uu88URZ6VUQ