The strange case of Minerva Bernardino: Pan American and United Nations women's right activist

Abstract

The crucial international feminist organization in the western hemisphere in the interwar years was the Inter American Commission on Women, formed in 1928 at the Fifth Pan American Congress. Above and beyond its role in nurturing feminist politics throughout Latin America, the IAWC inspired other transnational regional groupings, pressed forward women's rights issues in the League of Nations, and provide a means for transferring the hard won experience of international feminism into the era of the United Nations. The IAWC was unlike other international organizations in that it was an official intergovernmental network. Its leaders and participants were formally appointed by their respective governments, and their careers of feminist activism required the support of their national political leaders. The subject of DuBois' and Derby's article, Minerva Bernardino, depended for her appointment to the IAWC on the good will of the dictatorial president of the Dominican Republic, Raphael Trujillo. This article considers the contradiction between Bernardino's distinguished record of international feminist service and her disturbing association with one of the period's most notorious and undemocratic strongmen. In both international feminist and Dominican national political venues, Bernardino demonstrated her superior skills at moving with and between powerful patrons. During years when there was little mass activity around feminist goals, she made her contribution to the International feminist tradition as the consummate diplomat.