UC Davis

The latter half of the 20th century in the Caribbean and Latin American is often viewed as a period of revolutionary promise and disillusionment. While scholars have analyzed the contributions of women to revolutionary efforts, more work is needed on the ways Black women and women of color challenged the limitations of revolution. As the impacts of the Cold War, the Black Power movement and revolution spread throughout the hemisphere, how did Black women interpret the possibilities available to the them in the face of political radicalism and state violence? Carol Anderson argues that the Cold War systematically eliminated human rights as a viable option for mainstream African-American leaders in the U.S. In using the Dominican Republic as a case study, I show how Dominican women of color were at the forefront of human rights organizing as a tool for liberation in the Americas.

Revolutionary Dominicanidad offers a vital window onto how Dominican women of color adapted their strategies for protest and survival to fight for home and family in the Dominican Republic. By amplifying the voices of Dominican women, I show the varied ways women critiqued and ultimately changed the trajectory of resistance efforts in the Dominican Republic. I argue that women’s politicization of non-political spaces—such as funerals, motherhood, widowhood—publicly condemned the state violence of the Dominican military and the U.S. invasion. These condemnations undermined the triumphalist narrative declared by the U.S. and their appointed presidential regime in the D.R., which silenced the on the ground experiences of Dominicans in favor of imperialistic propaganda. Dominican women steadfastly demanded human rights even as both the Dominican and U.S. government denied them those very rights, both at home and abroad.