Santo Domingo, RD.
Santiago Cruz Valerio, the last of the men designated as confessed criminals who, on the orders of Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, participated in the death of the Mirabal sisters in 1960, died last weekend after living in hiding for decades and without serving his sentence. .
Former MP Minou Tavárez Mirabal, daughter of Minerva and niece of Patria and Maria Teresa Mirabal, attributed the “impunity” with which the Dominican governments had acted to the fact that Cruz Valerio lived “quietly” in the country until his death on Monday. .
“He was the one who beat Minerva Mirabal to death (…) it is very painful for us, who thought that this man died years ago; we knew that, what they told us Tavárez told Efe.
November 25, the date of the death of the Mirabal sisters, three opponents of the Trujillo regime, was established by the United Nations as the International Day of Non-Violence against Women.
The Dominican press reported on Monday that Cruz Valerio died at the age of 83 and that for decades he lived under a false name in a neighborhood of the city of Santiago (north, second in the country).
Cruz Valerio, Emilio Estrada Malleta, Ramón Emilio Rojas and Néstor Pérez Terrero were sentenced to 30 years in prison and Ciriaco de la Rosa to 20 years in 1963 after being found guilty of material murder for the sisters and the driver. Rufino de la Cruz, who had transported them in his vehicle to Puerto Plata, where their husbands were in prison.
However, they all escaped from the Citadel of Ozama, in Santo Domingo, at the beginning of the April 1965 Revolution and never returned to prison.
“Everyone has managed to do this (escape from justice) because of the impunity with which many governments have acted; in this country, Trujilloism is still alive today and continues to be ruled by Trujillistas and Trujillistas children,” said Tavárez Mirabal , whose father was the national hero Manolo Tavárez Justo.
The former presidential candidate said that “there is no democracy” in the Dominican Republic, “because there is no justice.”
Tavárez said he would like to know how Cruz Valerio lived surrounded by neighbors for so long that they never reported him and if there was “someone else” to protect him.
“I would also like to know, because it would be like a ‘band’ for my heart, to know if there are people around him who have spoken to him, who have rejected him, who have tried to denounce him. …”, he said.
The Mirabal sisters, remembered as Las Mariposas, were posthumously decorated on November 25 by the Dominican government, which granted Minerva Mirabal the exequatur as a doctor of law that Trujillo never gave her to reject her regime.