Dede Mirabal: Vivas en su Jardín

Posted on Monday, September 7

“Why weren’t you murdered?” Dedé Mirabal is constantly asked. “I lived to tell the story”, she answers. And in the pages of Vivas en su jardín she does exactly that: she tells us the story of her three sisters, Patria, Minerva and María Teresa, known as “the butterflies”, whose opposition to the dictatorship of Rafael Leónidas Trujillo cost them their lives, shook the Dominican society to the core, and triggered the events that led to the assassination of the dictator and brought down his brutal regime.

In her introduction to the book, author Julia Alvarez (In the Time of the Butterflies) states that “Dedé speaks about her sisters as human beings— flesh and blood— making it clear that heroism can live in us all . . . but she does not mention what may seem more natural to us: her own heroism, which may be easy to overlook.” Eduardo Galeano (Las venas abiertas de América Latina) stresses that Vivas en su jardín stands out for its courage, calling it “an intimate testimony, the story narrated from within, dictated by the memory [of the one] that lived it.”

Dedé Mirabal supported her sisters wholeheartedly but never became actively involved in the underground movement for various reasons. Mirabal and her mother helped to raise Patria, Minerva, and Mate’s children. She runs a museum in honor of her sisters, Museo de las Hermanas Mirabal, in their hometown of Salcedo, Dominican Republic. Through the years since their assassination, she has striven to keep their memory alive in the minds of the Dominicans.

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
Lunes 21, al mediodia