Cold Open

It’s late evening on November 25th, 1960, on a remote mountain road in the north of the Dominican Republic.

Swaying in the back of a Jeep, 24-year-old Minerva Mirabal sits between her sisters, their shoulders knocking. The heavy rain and twisting roads make it an unpleasant drive, but it’s one that the Mirabal sisters are happy to take — because it’s the only way they’ve been able to see their husbands. All three men are political prisoners, incarcerated for their opposition to the country’s president. And after having spent just a short time with them in the visiting room of their remote prison, the sisters are now returning home.

So far, it’s been a quiet journey. But up ahead, two pairs of headlights suddenly cut through the gloom.

But as she gets closer, Minerva realizes that the lights aren’t moving. Their vehicles blocking the road, and Minerva thinks she can see soldiers waiting in the shadows. The Mirabals’ driver has no choice but to stop.

An officer raps on the car’s window. Without saying a word, the driver winds it down and hands over his identification.

As the officer glances at the ID, soldiers abruptly open the driver’s door and drag the man out.

One by one, the Mirabal sisters are then pulled out as well. As they’re marched away from the road, Minerva twists her head and glances toward her sisters’ pale faces, panic rising in her chest.

This roadblock isn’t the first time the Mirabal sisters have been stopped by the regime’s forces. But this time will be different. Within hours, their bodies will be found in the wreckage of the Jeep at the bottom of a ravine. Soon, it will become clear that their deaths were no accident, but a brutal act of political violence carried out on the orders of the Dominican Republic’s president, on November 25th, 1960.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham, and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is November 25th, 1960: The Assassination of the Mirabal Sisters.

Act One: Saved By The Squall

It’s October 13th, 1949, in San Cristobal, in the Dominican Republic, 11 years before the deaths of the Mirabal sisters.

23-year-old Minerva Mirabal slips away from the crowd inside a lavish mansion. Champagne flute in hand, she steps into the gardens and breathes in the silence. From here, the Caribbean Sea stretches out before her, dark and still.

It’s a welcome moment of peace amid the noise of the party. But Minerva’s solitude is broken when a man in a crisp, white suit clears his throat. He smiles and introduces himself, although Minerva already knows who he is. He’s Rafael Trujillo, the President of the Dominican Republic. Minerva is instantly put on edge.

Nineteen years ago, Trujillo rose to power in a coup d’état. Ever since then, he’s ruled the Dominican Republic as a dictatorship. He has silenced dissent with imprisonment and executions. He’s built a cult of personality around himself, renaming the capital city in his own honor, and demanding that his portrait be hung in every house in the country. And he’s just as brutal to his neighbors as he is to his own people. In 1937, Trujillo ordered the massacre of thousands of men, women, and children living on disputed lands on the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Most were killed with machetes, some were tied up and drowned in the sea.

But right now, Minerva isn’t focused on Trujillo's politics. It’s his reputation with women that she’s worried about. She’s alone in the garden with a man who’s twice her age, and who, according to gossip, uses his power and privilege to seduce and abduct young women.

So, the hairs on Minerva’s neck rise as Trujillo steps closer. She can feel the warmth of his body and the sharp scent of alcohol on his breath. Minerva doesn’t want to offend him, but she’s desperate to think of a way to escape.

Then, just as Trujillo offers to top up Minerva’s glass, a few drops of rain begin to fall. She looks up to see dark clouds gathering. Minerva breathes a sigh of relief. The rain is the perfect opportunity to escape the president’s advances and return to the party.

Back inside, Minerva searches frantically for her father, Enrique. She finds him with her sisters and pleads for them all to leave immediately. But Enrique hesitates. Abandoning the party early will be perceived as a snub to the president—and getting on Trujillo's bad side is rarely a good idea.

It’s only when Minerva explains what happened in the garden that Enrique agrees to leave. No matter the risks, he won’t make her stay where she feels threatened.

So as the rain outside turns into a storm, the Mirabals sneak away from the party, hoping no one will notice their early departure amid the downpour. But Minerva’s beauty has caught President Trujillo’s eye, and when he can’t find her inside the mansion, he realizes that the Mirabals have left. He takes their departure as a personal insult.

The next day, armed officers arrive at the Mirabal house, demanding that Enrique write a letter of apology to the President. He does so, but it’s not enough. Soon, both Minerva and Enrique are arrested. They’re taken to jail and interrogated for supposed communist beliefs—but it’s obvious that it’s nothing more than an excuse to terrorize them.

Still, even as a dictator, President Trujillo can only take his retribution so far; Enrique is a wealthy landowner with prominent connections. It's one thing for the president to subjugate poor Haitians and disenfranchised Dominicans. But it’s another to threaten the country’s elite, whose support he depends on to stay in power. So, after only a few days behind bars, Minerva and Enrique are released.

For now, though, Trujillo's secret police keep a close eye on the entire Mirabal family, and Minerva herself is effectively placed under house arrest. She’s banned from attending the country’s only university, and all her mail is monitored.

After more than three draining years of this constant persecution, Enrique dies. But that doesn’t end the antagonism between President Trujillo and the Mirabal family. Over the next few years, the feud will escalate. Eventually, Minerva and her sisters will find themselves catapulted to the forefront of a political movement that will aim to bring down the government and rid the Dominican Republic of President Trujillo, once and for all.

Act Two: Fireworks and Butterflies

It’s January 1960, in Los Conucos in the Dominican Republic, seven years after the death of Enrique Mirabal.

45-year-old Patria Mirabal leans over her kitchen table with a knife in hand. She cuts into the plastic coating of a firework, gently easing the blade around the cylinder until the top comes off. Then, she tips it upside down and lets the gunpowder cascade into a bowl. She shakes the firework to get out every crumb of explosive, before picking up another from a box by her feet and beginning the process all over again.

After half an hour, Patria has amassed a pile of fifty empty fireworks and has a bowl brimming with black gunpowder. She then glances at the clock on the wall and realizes she’s finished just in time.

In the seven years since their father died, the Mirabal sisters’ hatred for the Dominican President Rafael Trujillo has only deepened. He has continued to wage war on his own people, crushing dissent with an iron fist. But his brutality hasn’t stamped out rebellion. Instead, it’s only fueled a growing underground resistance.

On June 14th of last year, a group of these dissidents attempted to overthrow the government. Exiled rebels gathered at three different locations outside the country, intending to invade and overthrow the Trujillo regime. Unfortunately for the rebels, sabotage and bad weather doomed their bold plan. Only one team successfully crossed the border, and they were easily overpowered, detained, and then executed by regime forces.

Still, even though the plot to topple Trujillo failed, the incident gave rebels in the country belief that momentum was with them. They adopted a new name in honor of the plot and began calling themselves the June 14th Movement. No one has been more committed to the cause than the Mirabal sisters: Patria, Minerva, and Maria Teresa.

Now, six months on from the failed coup, Patria allows her home to be used as a safe house. She stores weapons, hides revolutionaries on the run, and tonight, she’s even hosting a class on guerrilla warfare.

Having collected the gunpowder from the fireworks, everything is ready. The doorbell rings, and the first of tonight’s guests arrives. Patria welcomes them and leads them into the parlor. After a few minutes, the doorbell rings again, and then again. Soon, the parlor has ten people waiting. Last to arrive is the guest speaker: a skilled bomb maker who’s here to pass on the tricks of the trade to his fellow revolutionaries.

But one person who doesn’t attend the bomb-making class is Patria’s sister, Minerva. She can’t be there because she’s spending another night in jail.

Ever since Minerva rejected President Trujillo’s advances at that party in San Cristobal, Trujillo has held a vendetta against Minerva. He tried everything to have her banned from university, but Minerva worked around his restrictions and eventually became the first person to graduate law school in the Dominican Republic. Even then, Trujillo ensured that Minerva wasn’t allowed to practice law. But the public dispute transformed her into a figurehead of the campaign against the regime.

She’s now been thrown behind bars along with hundreds of other suspected rebel sympathizers. But her incarceration only adds to the Mirabal sisters’ status within the June 14th Movement, and when Minerva is eventually released and reunited with her family, she’s treated like a hero.

So, President Trujillo realizes that if he is to silence the sisters, he will have to change course. And decides to go after their husbands. The three men are arrested and detained. But even when their loved ones are in danger, the Mirabal sisters don’t let up. They continue their campaign against Trujillo’s despotic regime, and their support grows and grows.

Outside the country, foreign governments that once supported President Trujillo begin to step away. Inside the country, the influential Catholic Church turns on him as well. Several church leaders denounce his human rights record and call on him to release all political prisoners.

But President Trujillo refuses. He blames the increasing domestic and international opposition to his rule on “propaganda” circulated by the Mirabal sisters. And he decides he must put a stop to it.

Jailing the sisters hasn’t silenced them. Nor has imprisoning their husbands. A more permanent solution must be found. So, Trujillo will give orders for the three women to be killed. But murdering the Mirabal sisters won’t shore up President Trujillo’s regime. Instead, it will precipitate his downfall.

Act Three: Ajusticiamiento

It’s late evening on November 25th, 1960, on a remote mountain road in the northern Dominican Republic, a few weeks after President Rafael Trujillo concocted a plan to kill the Mirabal sisters.

Ignoring the torrential rain, military intelligence officer Ciriaco de la Rosa waits by his car, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. Four soldiers stand with him, rifles at the ready.

Then, through the storm, the headlights of a Jeep come into view. Ciriaco gives a curt nod, and his men step forward, blocking the road. The Jeep slows to a halt.

Ciriaco then approaches the vehicle and raises a flashlight. Inside the car, he can see the three people he’s looking for: Minerva, Patria, and Maria Teresa Mirabal.

He gives another order, and the soldiers pull the Mirabal sisters and their driver from the vehicle. Each soldier then takes a prisoner and marches them away from the others. In the darkness beside the road, the three sisters and their driver are beaten and then strangled to death one by one.

After a few minutes, the soldiers return, dragging the lifeless bodies behind them. Ciriaco instructs his men to put the corpses back into the Jeep. Then, they push the vehicle over the edge of the mountain road. It tumbles to the bottom of the ravine. Satisfied with his evening’s work, Ciriaco returns to base and reports that his mission was a complete success.

When the deaths are announced, the regime tries to claim that the Mirabal sisters died in a tragic car accident. But few Dominicans believe that story. Most suspect that President Trujillo ordered their deaths, and it becomes another blow to his fast-fading popularity. Because in the aftermath of the murders, the June 14th Movement is only boosted by a new influx of Dominicans who see the assassination of the Mirabal sisters as the last straw.

And eventually, President Trujillo will lose the support of those he needs most—the army. Six months after the murder of the Mirabal sisters, Trujillo will be killed in a plot led by his own generals. He will be ambushed on the road and gunned down by soldiers, in an ironic echo of the way he killed his most prominent political opponents, the brave and brilliant Mirabal sisters, who were murdered on his orders on November 25th, 1960.

Outro

Next on History Daily. November 26th, 1789. President George Washington attempts to unite his bickering nation with a new national holiday: Thanksgiving.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mollie Baack.

Music by Thrumm.

This episode is written and researched by Owen Paul Nicholls.

Edited by Scott Reeves.

Managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.