2020 (EN)

THE DAY AGAINST VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN CELEBRATED AT THE MUSEUM. THE PARTICIPATION OF KIMIYYA WOMEN

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Naples  ||  | 25 November 2020
Tutte le Attività (EN) - Anno 2020

With many webinar links women representing various fields - politics, culture, religion, volunteering, education, science, etc. - members of the KIMIYYA program of the Fondazione Mediterraneo celebrated the "World Day against violence against women" at the Museum of Peace - MAMT. The women members of the “Anna Lindh Italia Federation” participated.
It was the UN assembly in 1999 that chose this date in memory of the sacrifice of the sisters Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal, killed by agents of the dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. But what is the story of the Mirabal sisters? To find out, we need to go back to 1960. On November 25 of that year, in fact, three sisters were killed by agents of the dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic.
After being stopped in the street on their way to prison to visit their husbands, they were beaten with sticks and thrown into a ravine by their executioners, who tried to put the brutal violence through an accident. It was immediately clear to public opinion that the three women had been murdered. Patria, Minerva and María Teresa Mirabal - these are their names - were, in fact, known as activists of the clandestine group Movimento 14 giugno, disliked by the government. Because of their militancy, in January 1960, they were also arrested and jailed for a few months, as the page dedicated to their history published in the Encyclopedia of Women recalls.

The fight against the dictatorship
The three sisters also went down in history with the name of Las Mariposas (butterflies), for the courage shown in opposing the dictatorship, fighting personally for women's rights. On August 3, 1960, following public pressure and accusations of "violation of human rights" made by the Organization of American States against the regime, President Héctor Bienvenido resigned in favor of Vice President Joaquín Balaguer, while Trujillo was assassinated on May 30, 1961. The three sisters were remembered in 1995 by the Dominican writer Julia Alvarez in "The time of the butterflies", a book from which the film In the Time of the Butterflies with Salma Hayek in the role of Minerva was also taken. (here the trailer).

The institution of the Day
On November 25, 1981, the first "International Feminist Meeting of Latin American and Caribbean Women" took place and since then November 25 has been recognized as a symbolic date. In 1999 it was also institutionalized by the UN with resolution 54/134 of 17 December, as this study by the BBC recalls. A further step forward was taken with the recognition of violence against women as a social phenomenon to be fought, thanks to the Vienna Declaration of 1993.

The symbol of the red shoes
One of the most used symbols to denounce violence against women and raise public awareness on the issue are red shoes, "abandoned" in many squares. A symbol created in 2009 by the Mexican artist Elina Chauvet with the work Zapatos Rojas. The installation first appeared in front of the Mexican consulate in El Paso, Texas, to commemorate the hundreds of women kidnapped, raped and killed in Ciudad Juarez. With his art Chauvet also carries on a personal battle: to remember, every day, his younger sister, killed by her partner when she was 22 years old.