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Thursday 9/23/2021
1. Complete Socratic Seminar Worksheet

Read Article in Socratic WS (share your copy with a link below)

Develop questions for Seminar tomorrow

3. Do outside Research

Add articles, images, and links to Research Column

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Attach Articles, Photos, and Links to Outside Sources

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Attach Articles, Photos, and Links to Outside Sources

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Ask TWO Questions. Respond to everyone else.

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Ask TWO Questions. Respond to everyone else.

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Ask ONE Question. Respond to everyone else.

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CommonLit | Trujillo & the Mirabal Sisters

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Mike Kubic is a former correspondent for Newsweek magazine. In this article, Kubic recounts the events that encouraged Rafael Trujillo's rise to power, and the actions that ultimately ended the dictator's oppressive rule.

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/14Uqq-qJRvuxiDiO1aVHsnc-SUIWJAe8BI4wulC-fNh4/edit?usp=sharing

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PA46s9DP0sEK8oL1N3GE1H1hun8-PM8kWNvoSwcZya8/edit?usp=sharing

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i7MbMpPIL3BUDd4Kz1bnVdkWk9Zgl-f0Cg1CJ1VSBIM/edit?usp=sharing

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xnNrWrrwjwPURx8ctWULdAKKu_332vwGQdRdD-H2gBs/edit?usp=sharing

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Copy of Copy of A Socratic Seminar Packet 

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xfi8iQSQpmJW-eWvZXMg2RlYqztGc2z6CxqpEHU1-4k/edit?usp=sharing

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The Butterfly Effect The Mirabal Sisters Taking a Stand

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https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/women-of-the-year-1960-mirabalsisters-secondary.jpg

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a. Why was it that the death anniversary of the Mirabel sisters became the national holiday for the elimination of violence against women worldwide?

b. What were the main reasons that Dede’s husband refused to let her join the resistance, and did the patriarchy have anything to do with  how he was able to control her actions; would she have if not for him?

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a. Why does it take the death of a beloved, or important person for change to occur; can change not be achieved prior to an ultimatum?

b. What is the purpose of fighting for a cause?

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If Martyrs, resistance figureheads, and those who stand for liberty appear  commonly  throughout history, why is it that we are so against global change? Do we not learn from history repeating itself?

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https://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-wp0/wp-content/uploads/sites/99/2017/06/09201221/Mirabel-Sisters-1.pdf

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Three sisters who defeated a dictator T.A

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Three sisters who defeated a dictator T.A

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https://www.youngfeminist.eu/2015/11/three-women-who-defeated-a-dictator-the-mirabal-sisters/

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| Amplifying Young Feminism Across Europe

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Minerva, Maria and Patria Mirabal: Three sisters who fought the dictator Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and were killed for it in 1960.
Rafael Trujillo was one of the cruelest dictators in the history of South America. In 1931, he was elected President of the Dominican Republic by public vote after a military coup. Over the years of his dictatorship, he refused to step down from his throne and ruled over the country for 31 years.

The upper middle class of the Dominican Republic supported Trujillo - they saw him to be "improving the economic development of the country and providing much-needed infrastructure". The bourgeoisie ignored all of his murders and human rights violations. With the development of the economy came corruption and those who benefited the most were, of course, Trujillo himself, his close family and business people who chose to stay close to him.

Trujillo led in such a way that he was known as "El Jefe" (the chief). Due to his narcissistic nature, he re-named some cities, and even mountains, after himself. He had no tolerance for those who opposed him. Those who did were either imprisoned or murdered by unknown assailants. Trujillo was responsible for the murder of 50,000 people, including the Parsley genocidal massacre against the Haitians.

The leader was quick to suppress any sort of rebellion against his regime, yet the public began to secretly form solidarity groups and organisations to resist. One of these organisations was the "Butterflies", formed by three brave women known as the Mirabal Sisters. These sisters and their husbands put up a strong fight for human rights and democracy by risking their own lives. They distributed flyers about the people murdered by the regime of Trujillo in order to inform the public. They were also in possession of arms, which they were preparing to use once the movement would become an open revolution. They were declared as terrorists and traitors by Trujillo, and were arrested many times under the charge of dividing the unity of the country. The state took possession of their land and houses.

On November 25 1960 as Minerva, Maria and Patria Mirabal were returning from a visit to their husbands in prison, Trujillo supporters beat them to death with sticks, shoved them in the back of a car and threw them off a cliff. The government declared these as deaths caused by a road-traffic accident.
Trujillo thought that he could get away with the murder of the Mirabal sisters, just like he got away with the murder of thousands of people. He thought he could extinguish the movement that these sisters had founded. However, instead the deaths fueled the spirit of revolution in the Dominican Republic. Riots increased and, six months later on May 30 1961, Trujillo was assassinated.

In February 1963, the Dominican Republic elected a democratic government for the first time in decades. Dedé Mirabal, who was no in the car with her sisters on that day, dedicated her life to telling the story of her heroine sisters, and founded the Mirabal Sisters Foundation and Mirabal Sisters Museum. Her son Jaime David Fernandez Mirabal was elected as Vice President of Dominic Republic on 1996 to 2000. He is now the Minister of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation of Dominic Republic. Minevra Mirabal's daughter Minou Tavarez Mirabal was the deputy foreign minister from 1996 to 2000 and she is currently the presidential nominee for the 2016 Dominican Republic general elections.

Since 1981, 25 November is remembered as a day to raise awareness on violence against women, with various rallies and congresses organised worldwide in commemoration. In 1999, the United Nations officially announced this day as "International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women".

The regimes of dictators all around the world have worked in the same way throughout history. It supports those who ally them, and suppresses those who riot against them as traitors. These dictators, drunk on power, fear women the most. They fear women who are educated and brave, women who speak out and chose to resist.
Feminist "Butterflies" of Turkey
The same man has been ruling in Turkey for over 13 years. His title as the prime minister or president, it really does not matter. He is in power and is capable of causing a civil war between his party and that of the opposition in order to maintain his position. He has great supporters - those who are blinded by patriotic and conservative views, and those who are empowered by the fake stability of the economy. Ignorance in areas of human rights and freedom of speech is unsurprising, as people are convinced that the system (which they now benefit from) will never have a negative effect on their lives, as it has on the lives of others.

Yet what we see in the feminist movement in Turkey over the past 2,5 years is amazingly empowering. Women's lives are the most damaged by conservative regulations and unequal human rights, therefore they resist the most. A cleric announced that "pregnant women should not walk the streets" (as it is seen as pornographic), so thousands of pregnant women filled the streets with their baby bumps. A politician proclaimed that "women should not laugh out loud in public", so millions of women react with their laughter by posting photos of them laughing on social media platforms! A male politician says, "as a woman you should shut up" to a female politician, and thousands of women shout loudly "as a woman I speak up!"

Millions of women filled the streets of Turkey when Özgecan Aslan was brutally murdered last February - they united under the belief of "we do not want men who rape and murder women to get discounted sentences!" The law's symbolic name is the "law of Özgecan", and pro-government women's rights organisations have started to support it. The law has been presented in the parliament and has gained support by pro-government women's rights associations so it will probably pass and there will be deterrent sentences for the murderers and rapists.

Women of Turkey, the more the feminists speak up, the more they become aware of their human rights, and the more they react. They are not locked between the walls of their households. They are out on the streets, protesting and claiming their fundamental human right - the right to live!
It's never too late to accomplish what the Butterflies had accomplished. Let's remember what Patria Mirabal said: "We cannot allow our children to grow up in this corrupt and tyrannical regime, we have to fight against it. I am willing to give up everything for this, including my life."

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Three women who defeated a Dictator: The Mirabal Sisters |

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Minerva, Maria and Patria Mirabal: Three sisters who fought the dictator Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic and were killed for it in 1960. Rafael Trujillo was one of the cruelest dictators in the history of South America. In 1931, he was elected President of the Dominican Republic by public vote after a military coup.

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Complete this step on OTUS. Answer the question posed for the class on the Socratic Seminar Worksheet.

How does one’s identity shape their actions, decisions, and life?

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How did the mirabal sisters die?

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What were the sisters fearful of when they said “We lived in fear,” she wrote in her memoir, “and there is nothing worse than living in fear.”

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XjwtKQRJF_hRxuYkEeaRhxFkmlKruPk51I8-tWqQz7o/edit?usp=sharing

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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A. Why did Dede wanted to write her own autobiography?
B. Who murdered the Mirabal Sisters and when did they died?

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B) How did Trujillos childhood impact his actions and decisions as a ruler?

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Why was Dede the only sister to survive; what was the purpose for it?

Who is Trujillo and What was his nickname he declared to himself?

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Looking at how Trujillo ran his country. Can you compare him to any modern dictator rule now?

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What's an example of a time in life when you were oppressed by a higher form of authority? How did it make you feel and what do you or could you do next time to change it?

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Who did dede get married to in 1948?

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Which one of the Mirabel sisters do you relate to the most?

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Characters like Lio have ideologies that from real-life experience have been frowned upon. Do you think communism would work in our society if done correctly?

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What good things did Trujillo do?

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Ugly history: The 1937 Haitian Massacre - Edward Paulino

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A. What are some of the ways that Trujillo consolidates his power?

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A. Which Mirabel sister do you think fought the hardest against Trujillo?

B. Why did Minerva reject Trujillo's advances?

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A. Why were the people who did Trujillo's dirty work always in the shadows or the darkness?

B. What was the importance of silence in the reading.

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How the Mirabal Sisters helped topple a dictator - Shamia

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How the Mirabal Sisters helped topple a dictator - Shamia

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On November 25, 1960, three sisters-Patria, Minerva and María Teresa Mirabal-were reported killed in an "automobile accident." Reports said a car they were riding in plunged over a cliff in the Dominican Republic.

At least, that was the story in El Caribe, a newspaper sanctioned by the government of Rafael Trujillo, the brutal dictator who had seized control of the island nation in a military coup 30 years earlier. In reality, the Mirabal sisters were active members of the growing underground resistance against Trujillo's regime, and everyone knew their deaths were no accident.

Growing Up in Trujillo's Dictatorship

As middle-class women, wives and mothers, the Mirabal sisters didn't seem like obvious revolutionaries. Patria, Minerva and María Teresa, along with their sister Dedé, grew up in the town of Ojo de Agua, Salcedo Province, where their parents owned and operated a successful farm, along with a coffee mill and general store.

After attending the Colegio Inmaculada Concepción, a Catholic boarding school in the city of La Vega, Minerva headed to college in Santo Domingo, the capital, to study law. By that time, she had become increasingly aware of the injustices that existed in the Dominican Republic during the Trujillo era.

Known as "El Jefe" ("the Boss") or "el Chivo" ("the Goat"), Trujillo was the commander in chief of the army before he seized power in 1930. The prosperity, modernization and stability his regime brought to the country came at a high price: Trujillo took over the country's economy, including production of such goods as salt, meat, tobacco and rice, and channeled the profits to his own family and supporters. Civil and political liberties disappeared, and only one political party, the Dominican Party, was allowed to exist.

Trujillo's fearsome secret police rooted out dissenters, using tactics of intimidation, imprisonment, torture, kidnapping and rape of women, and murder. His regime would ultimately be responsible for tens of thousands of deaths, including the massacre of an estimated 20,000 Haitians living near the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic in 1937.

"There was a huge danger during that period," says Elizabeth Manley, an associate professor of history at Xavier University of Louisiana and the author of The Paradox of Paternalism: Women and Authoritarian Politics in the Dominican Republic (2017). "People were being disappeared and jailed and killed."

Joining the Resistance

Resistance was still building to the regime, both among exiled groups of Dominicans abroad, and at home. The majority of those involved were men, but many women also joined the movement, including the Mirabal sisters. By the end of 1949, Minerva had been arrested for suspected opposition activities; she also reportedly angered Trujillo by rejecting his sexual advances. At the University of Santo Domingo, she met fellow activist Manolo Tavárez Justo, and they married in 1955.

Minerva and her husband became resistance leaders, and Patria, María Teresa and their husbands soon joined them. In early 1960, they helped form the 14th of June Movement, named for the date of a failed insurrection against Trujillo led by a group of exiled Dominicans with the support of the Cuban government the previous year. Shortly after the movement was officially organized, Trujillo began mass arrests of resistance figures, including the sisters and their husbands, though he later freed female prisoners as a supposed gesture of his leniency.

After the attempt to assassinate Venezuela's President Romulo Betancourt on Trujillo's orders that June, the Organization of American States (OAS) cut diplomatic ties with and imposed sanctions on the Dominican Republic, and the United States withdrew its support of the regime. Trujillo was also losing ground at home, with the powerful church condemning his government's actions.

Against this backdrop, the Mirabal sisters traveled on November 25, 1960, to visit their husbands in prison in Puerto Plata. On the way back, Trujillo's henchmen stopped their car along a mountain road and killed their driver, Rufino de la Cruz, before kidnapping the sisters at gunpoint, beating and strangling them. The assassins then put the four bodies back in the car and pushed it over a cliff to make it look like an accident.

Impact of the Mirabal Sisters' Murders

The Butterflies, as the Mirabals were known, instantly became martyrs to the revolutionary cause, helping solidify resistance to Trujillo both at home and abroad.

"Killing women...was just beyond what people could stomach, and that catalyzed a lot of people to become more active in the movement," says Manley. Trujillo had painted himself as a champion of women and of mothers, granting full female suffrage in 1942 and sending one of the first female delegates (from any country) to the United Nations in 1945. "He touted these things and said they were an element of his progressivism," says Manley. "So this failure to protect women and [going] against this kind of maternal politics was a serious blow."

On May 30, 1961, seven assassins (including former members of the armed forces) ambushed the dictator's car along a coastal highway and killed him. Though Trujillo's death did not immediately bring democracy to the Dominican Republic-his successor, Joaquin Balaguer, continued the authoritarian tradition until the late 1970s-the country did not return to the level of brutal repression experienced during his reign.

Dedé Mirabal, who had largely maintained her distance from the resistance, survived the Trujillo regime and went on to raise her sisters' children, along with her own. Minerva's daughter, Minou Tavárez Mirabal, became a congressional representative and vice foreign minister, while Dedé's son Jaime David Fernández Mirabal served as vice president of the Dominican Republic (1996-2000).

The fame of the Mirabal sisters, fueled by Julia Alvarez's historical novel In the Time of the Butterflies (1994), spread worldwide. In 1999, the United Nations designated November 25, the anniversary of their deaths, as International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Dedé Mirabal also ensured her sisters' legacy, managing a museum out of their childhood home, the Casa Museo Hermanas Mirabal. She died in 2014, at the age of 88.

Fact Check

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How the Mirabal Sisters Helped Topple a Dictator | HISTORY

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The assassination of "las Mariposas" ("the Butterflies") fueled public outrage against one of the longest and most ruthless regimes in modern history.

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A. What message was the Dede trying to convey after publishing her autobiography after the novel "In The Time of Butterflies" was published?

B. After the reading do you beileve that there are similar situations happening around the world?

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What kind of a leader do you think Trujillo is?

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We all know that the Mirabal Sisters were heroes of the revolution but can you think of someone like a family member or a friend who was a hero to you, that you thought saved your life or tried to fight their life for you?