On a day like today, 57 years ago, Dr. Manolo Tavárez Justo, leader of the June 14 Revolutionary Movement, who, along with 14 of his companions, surrendered to the military forces pursued by the guerrillas who had been leading in Las Manaclas since June 28. November 1963.
Manolo stood out as a staunch popular leader who, along with his wife Minerva, founded the first major anti-Trujillo group after the June 1959 expeditions that entered the country from Cuba to confront Rafael Trujillo’s tyranny, but became crushed and close to 200 imprisoned guerrillas were massacred at San Isidro Air Base.
Taking advantage of the public assurances that the triumvirate government led by Manuel Tavares Espaillat had solemnly declared that it would respect the integrity of the guerrillas who accepted the surrender, Manolo and his companions took to a highway to surrender to the soldiers , but instead to catch them, they were shot.
The only survivor was the historian Emilio Cordero Michel, who was mortally wounded and not killed by the executioners.
Along with Manolo, members of the Las Manaclas guerrilla died: Leonte Schott Michel, Rubén Díaz Moreno, Alfredo Peralta Michel, Antonio Barreiro (Tony), Juan Ramón Martínez (Monchi), Manuel Díaz Herrera (Reyito), Federico José Cabrera (doctor guerrilla), Jaime Ricardo Socías, Arturo Ramírez Torres, Carlos Manuel Fondeur, Rubén Marte Aguayo, Caonabo Abel, Antonio Filón (Manchao) and José Daniel Fernández.
The triumviro Tavares Espaillat, who had gone to state television to ask the guerrillas to surrender to word that their rights would be respected, returned to the station that day to “inform the country that the guerrillas suffered 16 victims.” of the guerrillas who tried to “establish a communist dictatorship in the country, analogous to the dictatorship that oppresses the fraternal population of Cuba”.
Five of the guerrillas from Las Manaclas decided that they would not take advantage of these guarantees and try to descend the hills on their own: José Daniel Ariza Cabral and Luis Peláez left the mountain eastwards to try Santiago and Rafael reach. Reyes, Polón Méndez and Joseíto Crespo to the west.
Three days before the group’s debacle, Fidelio Despradel, military commander of the guerrilla front; Marcelo Bermúdez, Domingo Sánchez Bisonó (El Guajiro) and Germán Arias (Chanchano) had gone on a mission to the city to try to save the guerrillas from a disaster that was hungry and cold, without fighting, in the Central Mountains.
Ariza Cabral’s Testimony
At the age of 93, José Daniel Ariza Cabral has just published his fourth book, “Relevant facts of Dominican history”, in which he mimics the events of Las Manaclas and presents his dissertation on what happened.
For Ariza Cabral, the Americans were determined to prevent “June 14” from becoming “July 26” and the Dominican Republic to become a new Cuba, if not with Fidel Castro at the helm, and even less so with Manolo Tavárez.
According to him, the true perpetrators of the deaths of the Sisters Patria, Minerva and María Teresa Mirabal, the concerned leaders of “June 14” and wives of three of the most important leaders of that revolutionary organization, were not Trujillo’s work, but of the intelligence services of the United States through the Secretary of the Armed Forces, José René Román Fernández (Pupo).
According to Ariza Cabral’s claims, Román Fernández was committed to those services and was in the successor of the order when the fallout from the death of the Mirabal collapsed the image of Trujillo and the CIA and the Dominican patriots liquidated the tyrant.
Now that the Mirabal women have been murdered and national sentiment against the tyrant and his old regime has worsened, the Americans are said to have given the green light and weapons to the Satrap’s subordinates to kill him, six months after the crime of the ladies came into being.
According to Ariza Cabral, with these two actions the Americans had abolished the eloquent leadership of Minerva Mirabal and the dictatorial pretense of the Trujillato, so that no Castro guerrillas would be ignited in the Dominican Republic.
Elections were held in December 1962, won by Juan Bosch as a candidate for the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), but seven months later he was overthrown by a US-led military coup.
The country was again under the influence of a perverse combination: the bourgeoisie being anti-Trujillo in political command and the Trujillo army in full control of the whole machine of war and oppression.
But Manolo was still alive and was leading a powerful revolutionary movement that had warned, “Listen, gentlemen of the reaction, if you make the peaceful struggle of the people impossible, on” June 14 “you know very well where the steep mountains of Quisqueya are; and to them … we will go to them, following the example and to carry out the work of the heroes of June 1959. And in them we will keep burning the torch of freedom, the spirit of the revolution. … because then we have no other alternative than freedom or death! ”
The next step for the Americans to eradicate any serious threat that the country would fall into “communist orbit” was to entice the great leader Manolo to go to the mountains, and if he was better with useless weapons, to hunt him there.
On November 28, six guerrilla fronts emerged in the country’s three regions and attacked one by one, without posing a single serious threat to the coup or its military establishment.
One of the most notorious leaders, Hipólito Rodríguez Sánchez (Polo), was shot in La Horma, Ocoa, right at the hands of the troops of an army officer, supposedly committed to June 14, Captain Calderón, while Luis Genao Espaillat, commander of the Eastern Front, was easily caught.
The other three fronts, made up of very courageous fighters with little military experience, had already fallen in Barahona, Puerto Plata and San Francisco de Macorís.
The fall of Manolo was such a setback for the Dominican revolutionary movement that it could not be overcome 57 years later, leaving the progressive forces behind on conservative political projects where the sacrifice and blood of the sisters mattered little. Mirabal and Manolo and their companions.