‘Butterflies’ clubbed to death

The three Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic, activists against Rafael Trujillo’s bloody 30-year dictatorship, are assassinated in Santo Domingo on November 25 1960. Patria, 36, Minerva, 34, María Teresa, 25, and their driver, Rufino de la Cruz, on their way home after visiting Minerva’s and María Teresa’s imprisoned husbands, are stopped by Trujillo’s henchmen, strangled and clubbed to death. The bodies are put in their Jeep, which is run off the mountain road to make it look like an accident. The sisters, born in a farming family, all earned degrees. Minerva got involved in the political movement against Trujillo, followed by María Teresa and Patria. They established the “Movement of the Fourteenth of June”, named after a massacre witnessed by Patria. They adopted the name “Las Mariposas” (The Butterflies), Minerva’s underground name. (The fourth sister, Dedé, didn’t join in her sisters’ actions and dies at 88 on March 1 2014.) Trujillo is assassinated on May 30 1961. On December 17 1999, the UN designates November 25 as International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in honour of the sisters