Intimate Violations: Women and the Ajusticiamiento of Dictator Rafael Trujillo, 1944-1961

Abstract

The foundation of social order, the primary essence and basic nucleus of every political organization, rests in the family, without whose stable and healthy development, the prosperity of the nation is impossible. On the afternoon of August 10, 1959, several dozen Dominican and Cuban women gathered in the streets of Havana. Dressed in black as though headed to a funeral, they mourned the political situation in the neighboring Dominican Republic. Specifically, they targeted the dictator Rafael Trujillo, calling him the “Jackal of the Caribbean.” As they paraded through the streets carrying placards and visiting newspaper offices, tliey were focusing attention on their specific struggles as women and motliers. Their posters read, “Dominican Women Support the Revolutionary Government”; “We Ask for the Expulsion of Trujillo from the OAS”; and “We Represent the Mourning of the Assassinations Committed by Trujillo.”