page_title: Mirabal sisters
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Mirabal sisters / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: The old house of the Mirabal family and current residence of Dede Mirabal.
context_page_description: The Mirabal sisters were four Dominican sisters known commonly as Patria, Minerva, María Teresa, and Dedé, who opposed the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo and were involved in clandestine activities against his regime. Three of the four sisters were assassinated on 25 November 1960. The last sister, Dedé, died of natural causes on 1 February 2014.
  The assassinations turned the Mirabal sisters into "symbols of both popular and feminist resistance". In 1999, in the sisters' honor, the United Nations General Assembly designated 25 November the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
context_section_description: According to historian Bernard Diederich, the sisters' assassinations "had greater effect on Dominicans than most of Trujillo's other crimes". The killings, he wrote, "did something to their machismo" and paved the way for Trujillo's own assassination six months later.
  However, the details of the Mirabal sisters' assassinations were "treated gingerly at the official level" until 1996, when President Joaquín Balaguer was forced to step down after more than two decades in power. Balaguer was Trujillo's protégé and had been the president at the time of the assassinations in 1960 (though, at the time, he "distanced himself from General Trujillo and initially carved out a more moderate political stance"). 
  A review of the history curriculum in public schools in 1997 recognized the Mirabals as national martyrs. The post-Balaguer era has seen a marked increase in homages to the Mirabal sisters, including an exhibition of their belongings at the National Museum of History and Geography in Santo Domingo and the transformation of Trujillo's obelisk into a mural dedicated in their honor.
  After the assassinations, the surviving sister, Dedé, devoted her life to the legacy of her sisters. She raised their six children, including Minou Tavárez Mirabal, Minerva's daughter, who has served as deputy for the National District in the lower house of the Dominican Congress since 2002 and was deputy foreign minister before that (1996–2000). Of Dedé's own three children, Jaime David Fernández Mirabal is the minister for environment and natural resources and a former vice president of the Dominican Republic. In 1992, Dedé created the Mirabal Sisters Foundation, and in 1994, she opened the Mirabal Sisters Museum in the sisters' hometown, Salcedo. She published a book, Vivas en su Jardín, on 25 August 2009. She lived in the house in Salcedo where the sisters were born until her death in 2014, aged 88.
caption: The old house of the Mirabal family and the residence of Dedé Mirabal until her death on 1 February 2014, aged 88.[24]
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