MINERVA MIRABAL

María Argentina Minerva Mirabal Reyes de Tavárez, was a Dominican

lawyer and activist. She was born on march 12th, 1926 in Ojo de Agua,
Salcedo.

Daughter of Mercedes Reyes Camilo (Mrs. Chea) and Enrique Mirabal,

merchant and landowner.

At twelve years of age, her parents sent her to the Inmaculada Concepción
de La Vega School in La Vega province together with her sisters Patria and
Dedé. She graduated in 1946 in Letters and Philosophy.

In 1954, while on vacation in Jarabacoa, Minerva met there Manuel

Aurelio Tavárez Justo (Manolo), also a law student, with whom she got
married. He had two children with him, Minerva Josefina born in August
1956 and Manuel Enrique in January 1960.

Minerva had an outstanding participation with her husband in the

clandestine meetings that gave rise to the June 14 Revolutionary
Movement.

All this resulted in her being arrested on several occasions by the Military
Intelligence Service.

On November 25, 1960, when Minerva and her sisters returned from
visiting their husbands who were imprisoned, they were ambushed by
agents of the Military Intelligence Service (SIM) on the outskirts of Puerto
Plata, being led to a country house in the community of La Cumbre where
they were fiercely beaten with sticks and other blunt objects until they were
killed by order of General Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.

The remains of these are in the Mirabal Sisters museum in Salcedo,

Dominican Republic.

They inspired the international day of non-violence against women and will
always live in our hearts like the butterflies