Neither Russia nor the United States

Chapter 4 addresses three inter-related strategies employed by women following the demise of the Trujillato to reconstruct the body politic in the face of drastic political transition, a second U.S. occupation, and general social upheaval. First, Dominican women again called on the rhetoric of motherhood and maternalism in support of a return to domestic tranquility and for a nation free of dictatorial politics and foreign meddling. Second, political participation by women served to demonstrate a re-envisioning of the nature of Dominican politics through their burgeoning support of full gendered equality. Third, as now long-term members of a number of inter-American organizations, women called for continental solidarity to return sovereignty to Latin American nations plagued by foreign intervention, particularly their own. These strategies demonstrate both the potential for maternal politics as a form of national healing as well is its limitations for creating true gender equity.

Defending the Home against the Chaos of Communism

Chapter 2 charts the activism of the cadre of elite Dominican women from the granting of suffrage through the end of the Trujillo dictatorship, examines their national and international efforts, and addresses the shifts of feminine leadership that began after suffrage given the difficult compromises confronted under the harsh rules of dictatorship. On the one hand women continued their activism within the inter-American arena, while on the other they worked to create new clubs and groups that linked the international component with the local rhetoric of democratization and anti-communism. The chapter argues that female participation continued to be central to the functioning of the regime’s international reputation and domestic welfare programs, but that this same involvement would also serve as a catalyst for many other women to challenge the deployment of this maternalist vision and subsequently join the resistance movement.

Epilogue

The epilogue concludes with an assessment of the gendered politics of the final three years of Balaguer’s rule within the context of both the increasing attention to global feminism and the democratic transition to President Antonio Guzman in 1978. It looks specifically at the event surrounding the International Women’s Year (1975) and the ways the women in the opposition pushed forth a more active and gender-conscious agenda. Although the shifts were subtle, a clear difference in tactics manifested itself across the political spectrum as women advocated a more aggressive and cross-partisan platform of feminist rights. Through these transformations the grounding of modern Dominican feminism is then visibly linked to its early predecessors of the 1920s pre-Trujillo period while also embedded in the fifty years of engagement with authoritarianism and transnational activism.

Sangre sin Revolución

Chapter 6 addresses the ways in which many Dominican activists interrogated the role of Balaguer’s government in the regulation of individual’s women’s lives and families and challenged many of its violent, dictatorial tendencies. Refuting the regime’s argument for a “revolution without blood,” many women described the government’s agenda to national and inter-American audiences as “blood without revolution” and continued to mobilize within the opposition through the discourse of motherhood and family. However, the chapter also looks at the many cracks developing in the discourse of maternalism that, coupled with an ever-deepening awareness of the tools and tactics of international second-wave feminism, pushed many women to challenge a model of political participation that constructed their roles in the political arena merely as nurturers and caretakers.

Intimate Violations

Chapter 3 looks at women’s resistance activities on the island and in exile during the Trujillato, as well as the rhetoric that surrounded mothers and wives within the movement and argues that it was precisely the increasingly intimate violations of women and traditional gender roles that ultimately doomed the regime. The chapter advocates for not only a physical inclusion of women in the narrative of anti-dictatorial politics, but also a consideration of the role of traditional familial and feminine “protections” in the upending of a thirty-year regime. Women pointed out—to both domestic and international audiences—the failure of the regime to protect femininity and national morality and, as a result, led the way to the regime’s demise.

First to Liberate Women’s Lib

Chapter 5 addresses the role of women in the formal politics of the twelve-year rule of Joaquín Balaguer (1966-1978). It looks specifically to the efforts of the all-women governors appointed by the leader in 1966 and follows their efforts through the period to serve as the “vehicles of conciliation” and mediators between local and national politics. It argues that these female governors used their leverage with the regime to obtain resources for their constituents and recognition for themselves but also engaged international activism to create networks of involved and politicized women. Finally, the chapter demonstrates how the regime ushered an unprecedented number of women into the political arena as purported agents of peace and conciliation even while it promoted a highly conservative, maternalist, and Cold War fear-mongering model of female participation.

Advocating Suffrage and Sovereignty

Chapter 1 traces the increasing involvement of Dominican women in national politics through the 1920s and 1930s from the U.S. Occupation to the first decade of the Trujillo regime. During this period, Dominican women used the Pan-American arena to press for changes at the local level and they employed the rhetoric of egalitarian rule to assert their place in the theatre of democracy that Trujillo had begun to act out locally for the international stage. By proving themselves as skilled, networked, and non-threatening agents, the women active prior to and during the first decade of the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo made themselves central to a carefully orchestrated national and international reputation, garnered concrete political gains like suffrage, and allowed for their continued engagement with the politics of the Dominican state through an intense period of transition.

Introduction

The introductory chapter presents the two main arguments of the study. First, as a result of both the Trujillo and Balaguer regimes’ efforts to uphold the Dominican Republic’s international reputation as stable and project an image of a progressive and progressing nation, women found and expanded spaces of global and transnational activism that advanced basic political rights and paved the way for the late 20th century feminist movement. Second, while the paternal constructs of rule upheld by Trujillo and Balaguer did advance women’s roles in certain arenas of society and politics, they also paradoxically enforced a superstructure that maintained a traditional understanding of women’s innate abilities as maternal public figures. It elaborates on the historiographies of Dominican women’s history, transnational feminism, and dictatorship, and lays out the structure of the subsequent chapters.