Dear Reader,
My name is Maria Sanchez, and I will be your guide throughout this journey. I am an American journalist, fluent in Espanol. This website is the process I went through to better understand not only what empowered the Mirabal sisters all those years ago, but how they helped empower me as well. It started off as a simple assignment, but became close to my heart. Below is the beginning of my article, I've been so caught up in everything else I've found to finish it quite yet. Feel free to explore along with me! Throughout the site, there will be other links to click to jump to otras cosas, look out for bright, underlined text! Otherwise, click the various pages above to travel from one pagina to the next. Take your time, explora, and enjoy.
- Maria
The Journey of the Butterflies
Article by Maria Sanchez
As a young girl, I was always curious about my heritage. While others just let themselves be engrossed in culture and beliefs and practices, I wanted to ask why. I wanted to know why we are the way we are, and why we do what we do. Why are we known for tamales while the Americans are known for their hamberguesas? I was always asking questions, and rarely received answers that I could really understand.
This constant flood of questions soon landed me in journalism. Here I could ask endless numbers of questions, and if I was lucky I found an answer, or at least an opinion. One day while flipping through the paper, I found an article about the anniversary of the death of Las Mariposas, the heroines of my childhood. And then I began thinking, why were they the heroines of my childhood? Why were they a symbol of our freedom? What was their story? I couldn’t stop thinking about them.
For weeks they kept coming up in my thoughts, I couldn’t get rid of them. I finally decided it was time to begin a new project, uncovering the sister’s story, the story that had ended too soon, yet done so much for our country. They had loved their people and their culture so much they had died for it, maybe they could help me understand it as well.
I spent months researching in libraries, reading newspapers, and piecing together timelines. Eventually when I felt I had a fair grasp on their story, I decided it was time to meet with the ultimate source, Dede Mirabal. I had read that she was an older woman now, and cared for the old family house in Salcedo. She had escaped the tragic fate of her sisters, and spent her time helping others understand and see the battle they fought years ago.
The story of the Mirabal Sisters is a powerful one. Together they helped fight a dictatorship and unite a nation. But why? How? I couldn’t help but ask Dede these questions. What provoked them to risk their lives for their country? Others just sat by and watched the turmoil unfold, but not them. They stood up to their oppressors and fought back in the name of patriotism. Her answer surprised me.
“They each had their own reasons for revolution, whether to fight for a better country, for justice, freedom, or simply just a better life for their niños. They were living in forced poverty, fear, oppression… it was like continuously pushing them down. They all had an inner fire, a desire to get back up after getting pushed down. They managed to look deep inside themselves and find what they really and truly wanted. They reflected on the lives that they were living as well as the others around them. They realized that something needed to change, and realized it would need to be them. They knew society’s expectations, but they knew what they needed as well. They were young when the old were in control. They were women in a patriotic society. They were repressed when others had the resources to create change. They reflected on their situations and realized if change was to happen, they needed to be the catalysts. They were no damsels in distress, they were ready to fight for their friends and families, and their fellow countrymen and women." (7)
I was amazed at the power of the internal struggle these women must have fought, and the evolution of their determination. I wished that I could have seen the internal thought processes of these heroines, how they came to do what they did, what their true reasoning was. I told Dede my outlandish wish, seeing as the three butterflies were long deceased and inaccessible to question. Dede just looked at me and smiled,”Un momento senorita”. She got out of her chair by the garden, and wandered into the house, the same house the girls had known as children. She returned with a small crate, probably once used to gather fruit during the harvest. It was old and worn, and I wondered what it could possibly contain. Photos? Belongings? I couldn’t contain my excitement. What it contained was even better, inside was a treasure trove I never thought possible.
Journals, photos, articles, and poems. Notes, lists, pamphlets and drawings. Personal artifacts that could potentially help me understand their personalities, thoughts, opinions and more. I couldn’t contain my excitement, it was such an amazing discovery! Dede smiled again, and told me I could stay as long as I liked to look through everything. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I couldn’t wait to begin sifting through the various artifacts. Dede could tell, and excused herself from the garden. She told me that if I needed anything, she and the various staff would be available to help. With one last smile, she turned and left me to what seemed to me my very own time machine...