International day for the elimination of violence against women

The United Nations declared November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

The date was not chosen at random. It’s commemorative, in memory of Patria, Minerva, and Marie Teresa Mirabal, three sisters from the Dominican Republic.

Born into a prosperous family, the Mirabal sisters opposed the sanguinary, repressive dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. Their opposition continued despite mistreatment, arrest, and the incarceration of their husbands.

On 25 November 1960, after visiting their husbands at the La Victoria prison in Santo Domingo, Trujillo’s henchmen killed the Mirabal sisters and their driver in a field.

The Mirabal murder did not stifle opposition to the Trujillo dictatorship, and Trujillo was assassinated the following year. In an oddity or irony of history, he was interred at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.